August 2004

 

 

The Shadow of the Wind
by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
(Text Publishing)

 

 

The Book ... It is 1945 and Barcelona is enduring the long aftermath of civil war when Daniel Sempere’s bookseller father decides his son is old enough to visit the secret Cemetery of Forgotten Books . There Daniel must ‘adopt’ a single book, promising to care for it and keep it alive always. His choice falls on The Shadow of the Wind.

Bewitched, he embarks on an epic quest to find the truth about Julian Carax, the book’s mysterious author. Soon Daniel is consumed by strange discoveries about love and obsession, art and life, and how they become entangled within the shadow world of books.

The Shadow of the Wind is a mesmerising love story and literary thriller, which twists and turns and enthralls with its cast of vengeful souls, threatening spectres and innocent hearts.

The Shadow of the Wind is a novel of novels. This a book that invites the reader to take a literary ride unlike anything he/she has experienced before. Imagine a 19th century novel deconstructed to its tiniest atom and rebuilt again using what we could call all the "narrative technologies" evolved during the 20th century. That novel would be at the same time a mystery tale, a Victorian-gothic romance, a love story, a tragedy, a historical thriller, a comedy of manners and literary game of mirrors built like Russian dolls, in which each story leads to another, each character's secret leads to another secret and, eventually, this cathedral of narratives, sagas, enigmas and adventures converges and all the pieces fit. It would be a novel for people who love to read, and for those who have forgotten they love to read.

The Author ... Carlos Ruiz Zafón was born in Barcelona in 1964. The Shadow of the Wind, his fifth novel, was a finalist for the Premio Fernando Lara, has been on bestseller lists in Spain for over two years and was the number one bestseller in Germany . It is now being published in over twenty-five countries.

Translator: Lucia Graves is an author and also the translator of numerous works, including Spanish editions of the poetry and prose of her father, Robert Graves.

The Publisher : Text Publishing

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