num_pages: 487
description: 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.
language: English
title: The Shadow of the Wind
titlecomplete: The Shadow of the Wind
characters: Jacinta Coronado, Antoni Fortuny, Julián Carax, Daniel Sempere, Fermín Romero de Torres, Clara Barceló, Jorge Aldaya, Nuria Monfort, Ricardo Aldaya, Tomas Aguilar, Miquel Moliner, Francisco Javier Fumero, Gustavo Barceló, Fernando Ramos, Beatriz Aguilar, Bernarda, Penélope Aldaya, Sophie Carax
genres: Mystery, Fiction, Spain, Magical Realism, Gothic, Spanish Literature, Historical, Historical Fiction, Fantasy, Books About Books
ratings_count: 609845
places: Spain, Barcelona, Catalonia
series: El cementerio de los libros olvidados
awards: awardedAt: 1104566400000
name: Barry Award
category: Best First Novel, awardedAt: 1104566400000
name: Gumshoe Award
category: Best European Crime Novel, awardedAt: 1072944000000
name: Borders Original Voices Award
category: Fiction, awardedAt: 1104566400000
name: Dilys Award, awardedAt: 1136102400000
name: Humo's Gouden Bladwijzer, awardedAt: 1072944000000
name: Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger
category: Roman, awardedAt: 1104566400000
name: Prix des libraires du Québec
category: Lauréats hors Québec, awardedAt: 1420099200000
name: One Book One San Diego, awardedAt: 1009872000000
name: Premi Llibreter de narrativa
publisher: The Penguin Press