Theo Bennett★ Reader · Lv 2
todayA love letter to books disguised as a gothic mystery. Barcelona is the co-author.
Fiction
The Shadow of the Wind
4.5· 427 ratings
Published 2009EnglishAtmospheric · Labyrinthine
Every book, every volume you see here, has a soul.
Why read it
In postwar Barcelona, a bookseller's son is taken to a secret library called the Cemetery of Forgotten Books and told to choose one volume to protect forever. He picks a novel by an obscure author, and then discovers someone has been hunting down and burning every other copy in existence.
The premise
Zafon's gothic mystery sends young Daniel on a quest to uncover the fate of the vanished writer Julian Carax, and the deeper he digs the more the author's tragic past begins to mirror and menace his own. It is a love letter to books and storytelling wrapped in a labyrinthine tale of doomed love, murder, and the long shadow the Spanish Civil War casts over a haunted city.
The story behind it
Published in Spanish in 2001 and in English in 2004, it was Zafon's first adult novel after writing for young adults. Set in his native Barcelona, it became one of the best-selling Spanish books of all time, translated into dozens of languages, and launched a four-book Cemetery of Forgotten Books cycle.
What awaits inside
- 01
The Cemetery of Forgotten Books
The hidden labyrinth of abandoned volumes is the novel's unforgettable central image and the engine of its plot.
- 02
Nested lives
Daniel's investigation slowly reveals that Carax's story is echoing into his own, blurring reader and character.
- 03
Fermin Romero de Torres
The comic, wounded former spy who becomes Daniel's sidekick gives the dark tale its warmth and wit.
- 04
Barcelona as gothic stage
The fog, ruins, and postwar dread of the city are as much a subject as any character.
From the book
The opening visit to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books at dawn, where Daniel chooses the novel that will change his life, sets the whole enchantment in motion.
The menacing, faceless figure who calls himself Lain Coubert, the name of the devil in Carax's novel, stalking Daniel to destroy the last surviving book, drives the central dread.
4.5
427 ratings
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