People and Places

A. Three places in Nepal

The unit opens with three photos of famous places in the mountains of Nepal.

Kagbeni is an old village in Mustang, on the bank of the Kali Gandaki river, where the Jhong river joins it. Its flat-roofed houses, green fields of barley and buckwheat and its red monastery sit in a dry, brown valley. It is the gateway to Upper Mustang: north of Kagbeni, visitors need a special permit.

Shey Phoksundo Lake, in Dolpa, is Nepal’s deepest lake (about 145 meters) and one of its most beautiful, famous for its deep turquoise water. It lies at about 3,600 meters inside Shey Phoksundo National Park, Nepal’s largest national park, the home of the snow leopard.

Pathibhara is a temple of the goddess Pathibhara Devi on a high ridge (about 3,800 meters) in Taplejung. Pilgrims from all over Nepal and from India climb up to it, believing that the goddess grants their wishes. From the top, on a clear day, you can see Kanchenjunga, the world’s third-highest mountain.

B. Three famous Nepalis

The next photos show three famous Nepalis: a man with a moustache in a white shirt; a young woman and a man wrapped in the flag of Nepal, holding up their medals; and a smiling woman holding a tall trophy that says Hero of the Year.

Before you read

What kind of text it is

Paulo Coelho is a biography: the story of a real person’s life, written by someone else, in the third person (he, his) and mostly in the past tense. A biography usually follows the person’s life in time order: birth and childhood, education, work, achievements, family, and what people think of them. Look for dates and time words (from an early age, during adolescence, in his twenties, at the age of 36, since then): they hold the story together.

The text, part by part

1. A boy who wanted to write

Paulo Coelho is a Brazilian author and lyricist (a writer of song words). He was born on 24 August 1947 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. He loved writing and dreamed of being a writer from an early age, but his parents discouraged him (tried to stop him): they wanted him to become a lawyer.

During his adolescence (his teenage years), his parents were so worried about his dream, and his rebellious ways, that they had him put in a mental hospital (a hospital for people with mental illness), not once but three times. In his twenties, under Brazil’s military government of that time, he was arrested and tortured (made to suffer great pain on purpose). Through all this, he kept dreaming of being a writer.

For a while he gave in: he joined law school, as his parents wished, and abandoned (gave up) his dream. After a year he dropped out (left without finishing) and lived as a hippie, one of the young people of the 1960s and 70s who rejected ordinary jobs and comfortable lives, wore long hair, and traveled freely. He traveled through South America, North Africa, Mexico and Europe, and took drugs.

2. The pilgrimage that changed his life

In 1986, in his late thirties, he walked the pilgrimage (a long journey to a holy place) to Santiago de Compostela in Spain. On the way he had a spiritual awakening: he felt a new meaning in life, and he was inspired to write. He changed his life radically (completely).

His first book about it, The Pilgrimage, came out in 1987. A year later, in a two-week spurt of creativity (a sudden, short burst of work), he wrote The Alchemist (1988), the book that made him famous around the world.

3. The Alchemist

The Alchemist is an allegorical novel: a story whose characters and events stand for bigger ideas (an allegory). An alchemist was a person who, in the old days, tried to turn ordinary metals into gold. In the story, a young shepherd boy follows a mystical journey (one with a spiritual, magical meaning), learns to understand the “Language of the World”, and so gets what his heart most wants.

At first, few people noticed the book. Then, in the early 1990s, its French translation suddenly became a bestseller in France, translations into other languages followed, and the book became a worldwide phenomenon (an extraordinary event that everyone talks about). It has been called the most translated book by any living author.

4. His other books

Since then he has written a new book about every two years. Several are autobiographical (based on his own life), and most are about spirituality and faith, how society affects a person, and love. The text lists his best-known works:

Book	Year	What it is about
Veronika Decides to Die	1998	a young woman in a mental hospital: it draws on his own time in one as a teenager
The Devil and Miss Prym	2000	an investigation (a careful study) of whether people are good or evil at heart
Eleven Minutes	2003	love and desire, through the story of a young Brazilian woman who goes to work in Geneva
The Witch of Portobello	2006	a woman spiritual leader, told through interviews with people who knew her
The Winner Stands Alone	2008	a thriller (an exciting crime story) set at the Cannes Film Festival
Aleph	2010	his own 2006 journey on the Trans-Siberian Railway across Russia, which he embroidered (made more exciting with added details) with a meeting with a woman he says he loved in a past life
Manuscript Found in Accra	2012	the teachings of a Greek wise man in Jerusalem, just before the Crusaders attacked it (1099)
Adultery	2014	a successful journalist who is unfaithful in her marriage
Hippie	2018	his own travels as a young hippie in the 1970s

He also made collections of short pieces: Frases (1996), Life: Selected Quotations (2007), both made of excerpts (short pieces taken from a longer work) from his oeuvre (all the works of a writer), and Maktub (“It is written”, an Arabic word), chosen from his weekly column in the Brazilian newspaper O Globo.

5. Fame, fans and critics

Coelho is often called one of the world’s most widely read authors. He has won many prestigious (highly respected) awards, among them the Crystal Award of the World Economic Forum and France’s highest honor, the Légion d’honneur.

People disagree about his books:

• His fans call them inspiring and life-changing.
• His critics say they offer only vague spirituality (fuzzy ideas about the spirit) devoid of rigor (without careful, exact thinking).

Coelho doesn’t worry about his naysayers (people who criticize or say no). He refuses to be called a “self-help” writer and jokes that he is a “self-problem” writer. He says he writes a book for himself, and how readers react is up to them.

6. His family and his institute

He has been married to the artist Christina Oiticica since 1980. For many years the couple lived half the year in Rio and half in a country house in the Pyrenees mountains of France (they have since moved to Geneva, in Switzerland). In 1996 he started the Paulo Coelho Institute, which helps poor children and old people in Brazil.

Words from the text

Words linked here open in English Vocabulary, where you can see an example and practice them in the word game. The meanings below are the ones the words have in this text.

Word	Meaning here
lyricist	a person who writes the words of songs
discourage	to try to stop someone from doing something
adolescence	the years between being a child and an adult; the teenage years
torture	to cause someone great pain on purpose, often to punish them or to get information
abandon	to give something up completely
pilgrimage	a journey to a holy place, for religious reasons
radically	completely, in a basic way
spurt	a sudden, short burst of activity
allegorical	telling a story whose characters and events stand for bigger ideas
mystical	having a spiritual meaning that is beyond ordinary understanding
phenomenon	something extraordinary that many people notice and talk about
embroider	to add details to a story to make it more interesting (first meaning: to sew a pattern onto cloth)
excerpt	a short piece taken from a book, speech or film
oeuvre	(from French, said /ˈɜːvrə/) all the works of a writer or artist
prestigious	highly respected and admired
devoid	completely without something: devoid of rigor
rigor	great care and exactness
naysayer	a person who criticizes, or says something can’t or shouldn’t be done

A. Word families

Many English words come in families: a noun (a thing or idea), a verb (an action) and an adjective (a describing word) built on the same root, often with an ending such as -tion, -ment, -ive or -ing.

B. Put the events in order

C. Answer the questions

D. Which book would you read?

When someone is lost, we first ask politely, then give clear steps, using landmarks (things that are easy to see: a hotel, a temple, a bridge) and the words left and right from the walker’s point of view.

To ask the way	To give directions	To say where it is
Excuse me, how can I get to the post office?	Go straight on. / Go along this street.	It’s on your left / right.
Could you tell me the way to the bank?	Turn left / right at the crossroads.	It’s on the corner.
Is there a pharmacy near here?	Take the first / second turning on the left.	It’s next to / opposite the cinema.
Where is the nearest bus stop?	Go past the hospital. / Cross the road.	It’s about 100 meters on your left.
	Go round the roundabout. / Go over the bridge.	You can’t miss it!

Directions are instructions, so they use the imperative (go, turn, take, cross) and sequence words (first, then, after that).

A. On the map

The map shows Central Street running up the middle from You are here, crossed first by 1st Street and then by 2nd Street, with a roundabout where Central Street meets 2nd Street. Tap any place below to see the way there and the words to say.

B. Give directions

Articles are small words that come before a noun: a and an (the indefinite articles) and the (the definite article). They tell the listener whether you mean any one thing or a particular one that you both know.

a or an?

A and an go only before a singular countable noun (one thing that can be counted: a book, never ✗ a books or ✗ a water). Which one you use depends on the first sound of the next word, not its first letter:

an before a vowel sound	a before a consonant sound
an ant, an orange, an expensive guitar	a dove, a brook, a beautiful daughter
an hour, an honest man, an honorable teacher (h not said)	a house, a hospital (h said)
an S.P., an MP, an X-ray (said es, em, ex)	a university, a uniform, a European (said you-)
an umbrella, an uncle	a one-rupee coin (said wun-)

a/an or the?

Use a / an	Use the
when you mention something for the first time: A dove saw an ant.	when you mention it again: The ant struggled.
for any one of its kind: Can I borrow a pen?	for the one we both know: Pass me the pen on the table.
to say what job someone has, or what kind of person: She is a university student.	when it is clear which one from the situation: the bank (of the brook), the head teacher (of our school)
for one in a quantity or rate: half an hour, Rs. 60 a kilo, twice a week	for things there is only one of: the Sun, the Moon, the sky
	with superlatives and first, second, last: the hardest, the best, the second floor
	when a phrase after the noun picks it out: the boy wearing a black cap

Marking the articles in a fable

A fable is a short story with animals that teaches a lesson (a moral). The book’s fable is one of Aesop’s, told in Greece about 2,500 years ago: a dove saves an ant from drowning by dropping a blade of straw beside it; later the ant saves the dove by stinging a man who is about to throw a stone at it. Its moral: one good turn deserves another (a kindness should be repaid).

B. a, an or the

A book review tells other readers what a book is about and whether it is worth reading. A good review informs (the facts and the story) and judges (your opinion, with reasons), but it never gives away the ending.

The review of The Alchemist, part by part

1. The book’s details, in a list at the top:

Detail	In the review
Title and author	The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho
Year	1988 (the first, Portuguese, edition)
Publisher	HarperCollins, for the English translation
Characters	the main ones: Santiago the shepherd boy, Melchizedek (an old king), the Englishman, Fatima, the alchemist, the shopkeeper, the Coptic monk
Genre	the kind of book: adventure fiction

2. The plot, in a short paragraph. The review sums up the story as a quest (a long search): Santiago, a Spanish shepherd boy, keeps dreaming of treasure under the pyramids of Egypt. An old king gives him advice and two magic stones, and he sets off across the Mediterranean Sea and the Sahara Desert to find the treasure and fulfill his Personal Legend (the review explains this as our purpose in life). On the way, among swindlers (cheats), tribal wars and endless sand, he finds love, learns alchemy and the language of his own heart, and keeps struggling toward his treasure. The review stops there: it doesn’t say whether he finds it.

3. The reviewer’s opinion, with reasons. The book offers insightful (wise, deep) ideas about destiny, rising above failure and the oneness of the universe, in quite simple diction (choice of words). Its descriptions are awe-inspiring, its word choice immaculate (perfect), but its real magic is the depth of feeling behind the words. The reviewer’s best line: the book lets you escape reality and understand it at the same time.

4. A recommendation, at the end: it may not be an ordinary novel, but it deserves a place on your bookshelf.

Before you read

The picture shows two women in a house: one, in an apron, is working hard, cleaning, while the other, well dressed, stands by and gives orders.

The poet and the poem

Langston Hughes (1901–1967) was an African American poet from the United States, a leading writer of the Harlem Renaissance, a flowering of Black art, music and writing in New York in the 1920s. He wrote about the lives of ordinary Black Americans in their own everyday speech, often with the rhythms of jazz and blues.

Madam and Her Madam, from his book One-Way Ticket (1949), is one of a set of twelve poems about Alberta K. Johnson, a proud, sharp-tongued working woman who calls herself “Madam”. In those days in America, many Black women could find work only as domestic workers (maids, cooks and nannies) in the houses of white families, for long hours and low pay. So the title has a joke in it: two madams, Alberta herself, and the woman she works for.

What kind of text it is

It is a narrative poem (a poem that tells a little story) in six stanzas of four short lines each. The speaker, Alberta, tells it in the first person (I) and in everyday spoken English: she drops words (Had to get breakfast, without I) and says You trying to instead of Are you trying to. In each stanza, the second and fourth lines rhyme (mean and clean, too and through, be and me), or nearly rhyme (around and down). The tone is funny on the surface but bitter underneath.

The poem, stanza by stanza

Stanza 1. Alberta worked for a woman who was not mean (not unkind). But that woman had a house of twelve rooms to clean, and Alberta cleaned it.

Stanza 2. She also had to cook all three meals, breakfast, dinner and supper (in the old way of speaking, dinner was the big meal in the middle of the day and supper the light meal in the evening), and then, when she got through (finished) all that, look after her employer’s children.

Stanza 3. And more: washing, ironing and scrubbing, and even walking the dog. It was all too much, and it nearly broke her down (nearly made her collapse).

Stanza 4. So Alberta spoke up. Calling her employer “Madam”, she asked whether she was trying to make a pack-horse of her: a horse used to carry heavy loads, an animal that works without rest.

Stanza 5. Her employer opened her mouth and cried, “Oh, no!” and told Alberta how much she loved her. She answered the complaint with loving words, but didn’t offer to reduce the work at all.

Stanza 6. Alberta answered that it might be true that Madam loved her, but she certainly didn’t love Madam. I’ll be dogged if… is an old, mild exclamation, a polite way of saying I’ll be damned if…: “I certainly do not.”

How the poem works

• Irony (saying one thing while the situation shows another): She wasn’t mean, says Alberta, and then lists work enough for three people. The employer isn’t cruel in words, but her demands are cruel in effect.
• A list of jobs, stanza after stanza (clean, breakfast, dinner, supper, children, wash, iron, scrub, the dog), piles up just as the work did.
• A metaphor: a pack-horse compares Alberta to a working animal, treated as a thing that carries loads, not as a person.
• Repetition and reversal: I said, Madam opens stanzas 4 and 6, and the employer’s I love you so is turned around in Alberta’s last line, If I love you! The poem ends with a laugh that is really a protest.

A. Match the words

B. Answer the questions

C. Discrimination in our society

Homonyms are words that look or sound the same but have different meanings. There are two kinds:

• homophones sound the same but may be spelled differently: right and write, fair and fare, band and banned;
• homographs are spelled the same but may sound different: a lead pencil /led/ and to lead the way /liːd/.

The fifteen words to look up are spelled the same in each meaning, and most also sound the same, so only the sentence tells you which meaning is meant. A dictionary lists each meaning separately, often with a small number: bat¹, bat².

Word	Said	Meaning 1	Meaning 2 (and more)
address	/əˈdres/ (verb); noun also /ˈædres/ in American English	n. where someone lives: Write your address on the form.	v. to speak to, or deal with: The mayor addressed the crowd. We must address the problem.
band	/bænd/	n. a group of musicians: a rock band	n. a thin strip or ring: a rubber band
bat	/bæt/	n. a wooden club for hitting a ball: a cricket bat	n. a small flying animal that comes out at night
current	/ˈkʌrənt/	adj. happening now: current affairs	n. a flow of water, air or electricity: a strong current in the river
express	/ɪkˈspres/	v. to show a feeling or idea in words or actions	adj./n. fast, with few stops: an express bus
fair	/feə(r)/	adj. just, treating people equally; light in color (fair hair)	n. an outdoor show with rides, stalls or goods for sale: a trade fair
kind	/kaɪnd/	adj. caring and generous	n. a type: What kind of music do you like?
lie	/laɪ/	v. to say something untrue (lied, lied)	v. to be flat, to rest (lay, lain): lie on the bed
match	/mætʃ/	n. a game: a football match	n. a matchstick; v. to go well together: Your shoes match your bag.
pound	/paʊnd/	n. a unit of weight (about 454 grams); British money (£)	v. to hit hard again and again, to crush: pound the spices
ring	/rɪŋ/	n. a circle of metal worn on a finger	v. to make the sound of a bell or phone (rang, rung)
right	/raɪt/	adj. correct; the opposite of left	n. what you are allowed by law: the right to education
rock	/rɒk/ (American /rɑːk/)	n. stone; a type of loud music	v. to move gently from side to side: rock a baby
spring	/sprɪŋ/	n. the season after winter	n. a coil of wire; a place where water comes out of the ground; v. to jump suddenly
tender	/ˈtendə(r)/	adj. gentle and loving; soft (tender meat); painful to touch	n. a formal offer to do work at a stated price: The council asked for tenders to build the road.

Some of them also have a homophone with a different spelling: right – write, rite; fair – fare; band – banned; current – currant (a small dried grape); ring – wring (to twist out water).

A. Before you listen

The picture shows three people standing in a city street, near a sign. A man in a scarf holds a map; a young woman beside him is pointing down the road, and another young man stands behind them.

The recording

A young woman visiting a city is lost: she was looking for the art museum but took a wrong turn. She stops a young man in the street and asks the way. Read the questions in B and C first, then listen, as many times as you need.

B. True or false

C. Short answers

D. The way to the head teacher

Many nouns take no article at all (we call it the zero article, and the book marks it with a cross, ✗). Here are the cases this exercise tests.

No article with…	Examples
meals, in general	have lunch, eat breakfast, What’s for dinner?
television (as something we watch), TV	watch television, see a film on TV
space (beyond the Earth’s air)	travel in space, astronauts in space
plural and uncountable nouns meaning things in general	Films teach a lot. Rice is cheap here.
names of people, cities, countries and single mountains and lakes	Kathmandu, Nepal, Mt. Everest, Rara Lake

But we do say the:

the with…	Examples
things there is only one of	the Moon, the Sun, the sky, the world
rivers, seas and oceans	the Narayani River, the Koshi, the Pacific
the radio and the cinema, in fixed phrases	listen to the radio, go to the cinema
superlatives and order words	the best holiday, the second floor, the nearest shop
a place both speakers know	the head teacher’s room (of our school), the end of this street

And a/an for one, not yet known: We went to a restaurant. I haven’t got a radio. We had a nice time.

Fill in the blanks

A biography is the story of a person’s life written by someone else. When you write one from notes, you turn each note into full sentences, in time order, in the past tense (for someone who has died), joined by time words: in 1919, as a child, after his mother’s death, later, in his old age.

Madhav Prasad Ghimire (1919–2020) was one of Nepal’s greatest poets. In 2003 the Government of Nepal gave him the title Rashtrakavi, the National Poet. Many of his poems became much-loved songs, among them Gauncha Geet Nepali and Nepali Hami Rahaula Kaha. His long poem Gauri, a lament (a poem of grief) for his first wife, Gauri, who died young, is still one of the most moving poems in Nepali.

An idiom is a fixed expression whose meaning is not the meaning of its words put together. It’s raining cats and dogs has nothing to do with animals: it means it’s raining very hard. You learn an idiom as a whole, like a single word. Nepali is full of them too: आँखा लाग्नु doesn’t mean that eyes are stuck on, but to fall asleep.

Idiom	Meaning	Example
a hot potato	a subject or problem that is difficult and that people argue about, so no one wants to deal with it	Raising bus fares is a political hot potato.
a tall story	a story that is hard to believe because it is exaggerated	He told a tall story about meeting a yeti on the trek.
a night owl	a person who likes to stay up late at night	My brother is a night owl: he studies until 2 a.m.
no pain, no gain	you must work hard, or suffer a little, to get something good	Training at 5 a.m. is hard, but no pain, no gain.
miss the boat	to lose a chance because you were too slow	Applications closed yesterday, so I missed the boat.
put a bug in someone’s ear	to give someone a quiet hint or idea about something	I put a bug in Dad’s ear about a new bicycle for my birthday.
see eye to eye	to agree completely with someone	My sister and I don’t always see eye to eye about music.
give it a shot	to try something	I’ve never played chess, but I’ll give it a shot.
kill two birds with one stone	to get two things done with a single action	I bought vegetables on my way back from school, killing two birds with one stone.

Practice on this unit in the style of the final exam. Try each one as in the exam, then open the answer.