Barcelona, 1945--just after the war, a great world city lies in shadow,
nursing its wounds, and a boy named Daniel awakes on his eleventh
birthday to find that he can no longer remember his mother's face. To
console his only child, Daniel's widowed father, an antiquarian book
dealer, initiates him into the secret of the Cemetery of Forgotten
Books, a library tended by Barcelona's guild of rare-book dealers as a
repository for books forgotten by the world, waiting for someone who
will care about them again. Daniel's father coaxes him to choose a
volume from the spiraling labyrinth of shelves, one that, it is said,
will have a special meaning for him. And Daniel so loves the novel he
selects, The Shadow of the Wind by one Julian Carax, that he sets out to
find the rest of Carax's work. To his shock, he discovers that someone
has been systematically destroying every copy of every book this author
has written. In fact, he may have the last one in existence. Before
Daniel knows it his seemingly innocent quest has opened a door into one
of Barcelona's darkest secrets, an epic story of murder, magic, madness
and doomed love. And before long he realizes that if he doesn't find out
the truth about Julian Carax, he and those closest to him will suffer
horribly.
As with all astounding novels, The Shadow of the Wind sends the mind
groping for comparisons --The Crimson Petal and the White? The
novels of Arturo Pérez-Reverte? Of Victor Hugo? Love in the Time of
Cholera?--but in the end, as with all astounding novels, no comparison
can suffice. As one leading Spanish reviewer wrote, "The originality of
Ruiz Zafón's voice is bombproof and displays a diabolical talent. The
Shadow of the Wind announces a phenomenon in Spanish literature." An
uncannily absorbing historical mystery, a heart-piercing romance, and a
moving homage to the mystical power of books, The Shadow of the Wind
is a triumph of the storyteller's art.
