But Paulo Coelho, the best-selling Brazilian author, took book promotion to a new level yesterday when he completed a two-week, 5,770-mile train journey across Russia.

Senhor Coelho, 59, arrived in the far eastern port of Vladivostok on board a specially adapted train, complete with showers, personal chefs and a retinue of publishers and bodyguards. Huge crowds had turned out to see him on his stopovers in Yekaterinburg, Novosibirsk, Krasnoyarsk and Irkutsk, highlighting the growing appeal of popular Western literature in Russia.

The trip was part of a world tour to mark the 20th anniversary of Senhor Coelho’s pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in Spain, which inspired his early works, such as The Alchemist.

The Russian leg of his promotional tour also coincided with the anniversary of his release from prison under Brazil’s military dictatorship on May 29, 1974.

But his publishers said that the trip was also helping to promote his first book, The Pilgrimage: A Contemporary Quest for Ancient Wisdom, which has recently been translated into Russian.

Senhor Coelho’s popularity here reflects Russians’ fascination with the mystical world, as well as their growing demand for popular Western literature.

In the Soviet Union only officially-approved Western authors, notably Ernest Hemingway and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, were published.

In the 1990s, the Russian market was too small and unstable to justify translating works into Russian on a large scale. But Russia is now emerging as a big new market for Western best-sellers.

Yelena Solovyova, chief editor of Knizhny Biznes, a publishing industry magazine, said that half the 50,000 new titles each year were now foreign works, compared with 36.5 per cent in 2002. “Tastes have changed. Several years ago, it was classical literature being published, and if it was 20th century, it was from the 1960s and 1970s,” she said.

Senhor Coelho said 1,000 people had turned up to one book signing in Siberia, and 600 attended another in Vladivostok yesterday. He conceded, however, that the train was not as comfortable as he had expected. He started drinking vodka near Irkutsk to help himself sleep, he said, but even that did not work.

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