The Shadow of the Wind

by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

book data

14,767 ratings, 4.21 average rating, 3,265 reviews (more data...)

rating	frequency	%
5		46%
4		34%
3		14%
2		3%
1		1%

edit

published

October 5th 2005 (first published 2001) by Phoenix Press

binding

Paperback, 512 pages

setting

Spain

literary awards

Barry Award for Best First Novel (2005)

isbn

0753820250 (isbn13: 9780753820254)

description

The international literary sensation-a runaway bestseller in Spain, rights sold in more than 20 countries-about a boy's quest through the secrets and ...more

[close] The international literary sensation-a runaway bestseller in Spain, rights sold in more than 20 countries-about a boy's quest through the secrets and shadows of postwar Barcelona for a mysterious author whose book has proved as dangerous to own as it is impossible to forget.

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.

Translated by Lucia Graves. [close]

find at: Amazon | Half.com | Barnes & Noble | Abebooks | compare prices…

new topic
discuss this book

topics	posts	views	last activity
The Next Best Boo...: The Person Below Me	3764	1393	9 minutes ago
The Next Best Boo...: OFFICIAL SUMMER CHALLENGE 2009	3836	4456	19 minutes ago
Chicks On Lit: what are you reading.	1282	1717	26 minutes ago

friend reviews

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

lists with this book

Best Books of the Decade: 2000's

788 books | 3356 voters

More lists...

other reviews (showing 1-20 of 20,564)

sort: default (?) | date
filters: all | text-only

01/17/08

Jamie rated it:

(review of isbn 0143034901)

Read in January, 2009

recommended to Jamie by: The girl at the Ferry Building Bookshop
recommends it for: Anyone. So good.

There's probably nothing much I "learned" in the introspective sense, but this is a novel like a novel ought to be. This is an epic film on paper, gloomy and engaging, smokey, noir with crumbling ruins, young love, disfigurment, lust, torture...the stuff of Dumas, DuMauier and, as of late, The Historian. I woke up at five a.m. and had to sweet talk myself back to sleep: all I wanted to do was read. One Friday, after work, I took sanctuary in The Hotel Biron, those little tables in t...more There's probably nothing much I "learned" in the introspective sense, but this is a novel like a novel ought to be. This is an epic film on paper, gloomy and engaging, smokey, noir with crumbling ruins, young love, disfigurment, lust, torture...the stuff of Dumas, DuMauier and, as of late, The Historian. I woke up at five a.m. and had to sweet talk myself back to sleep: all I wanted to do was read. One Friday, after work, I took sanctuary in The Hotel Biron, those little tables in the dark, pages flickering with candles and drank a glass of wine in solitude, completely enthralled in the world of 1940's Barcelona.
I walked home from the train at night and found myself saying the characters names beneath my umbrella, hoping no one would hear me talking to myself, but they were, quite simply, too beautiful to ignore: Julian Carax, Daniel Semepere, Beatriz...Tomas, Penelope Aldaya and Nuria Monfort.
In a movie this would be too many people, but for this novel they were perfectly seamed, each point of view more entralling and taxing than the one before.
Most refreshing, clearly the author wasn't poisoned with the desire to simply keep the reader in the dark: instead this story, with attention, was something you could figure out--because that's the way life is. The mystery itself isn't supposed to shock you intensely into thinking a book is good, that's a dirty trick. Instead, the STORY carried you. You cared about the story and it was a tragity and mystery all the same, simply because you were invested in these people and what became of them. To know them so intimately from childhood to adulthood and old age, to know them through various degrees of point of view seperation--to hear there is no Penelope, and then to know she is a sister, a love, but to some non-existant...well, it's gothic literature at it's very best.
With a book like this I am almost, ALMOST tempted to give up my most pedantic and pretentious thoughts, paralells and character development--this story is a story and it's just that good. It is the Phantom of the Opera, those dark tunnels and pressure points, a lake with candles or drawing rooms with no fire in the grate and crazy wives being stored in attics over head. This is, quite literally a timeless tale, and yes, reading it will make you smarter, more interested, more cultured (the back of the book includes a walking tour of Barcelona. I missed Barcelona but I am quite determined to go now, with my copy of A Shadow of the Wind in hand, just like wanting desperately to visit Eastern Europe after I finished The Historian and see it all), but more importantly real life simply fades to black as you become completely, totally and fantastically helpless and wrapped up in the lives of others.
While there are fun hybrids--Crash Topics in Calamity Physics, for one, which combine a courses, authors, quotes and plot lines from a thousand famous novels, this book really makes that unnecessary. This is a classic without any help, no cheat cheats necessary. Read it. Read it. Read it.(less)

Like this review? yes (30 people liked it)

2 comments

03/31/08

Deb rated it:

(review of isbn 0143034901)

bookshelves: favorites, fiction

Read in April, 2008

I bought a copy of this book last September at the library's book sale, but it languished unread on my shelf until yesterday. What prompted me to pick it up was this: I was browsing through the backlist and pre-orders at Subterranean Press because of an author I'd found who releases specialized, small run stories that I thought I'd like to read. (Caitlin R. Kiernan) Turns out her books now run about $40-60 a pop and are generally only available third hand. As I browsed down the list, I saw that ...more I bought a copy of this book last September at the library's book sale, but it languished unread on my shelf until yesterday. What prompted me to pick it up was this: I was browsing through the backlist and pre-orders at Subterranean Press because of an author I'd found who releases specialized, small run stories that I thought I'd like to read. (Caitlin R. Kiernan) Turns out her books now run about $40-60 a pop and are generally only available third hand. As I browsed down the list, I saw that "The Shadow of the Winds" was priced at $75, and thought it was odd since the trade paperback was surely no more than $15.

Not only is this small press offering a $75 edition, they're also printing 26 copies of a $500 edition. That piqued my curiousity intensely--I knew the book was popular in literary circles, but I didn't think it had reached those heights. At the bottom of the page, the hook, line, and sinker read:

"We consider The Shadow of the Wind one of the most important books of the past twenty years, and aim to honor it with the lavish edition it so richly deserves."

I'm trying to read slowly: fifteen minutes here, thirty minutes there. This is a book that wants to be devoured, and I'm beginning to feel about it like I feel about Winterson's The Passion--sentences with lush philosophical gems sparkle in Zafon's beautiful prose, and I'm bending corners on the pages with the phrases that make me ache. (There are only four books that I've ever bent pages on).

The basic plot of the story runs something like this: the son of a Barcelona book-seller is taken to a graveyard of books to find and adopt one of them. He picks "The Shadow of the Wind" by Julian Carax and, after reading through the book in its entirety, realizes that it is the pinnacle of anything he's every read. After trying to find more books by Carax, however, the boy discovers a mystery that digs deep into both his life and the lives of those around him.

The truly interesting part is the way this novel is layered like Russian puzzle dolls, how each chapter reveals more plot within the plot. The amazing part comes when you realize the connections between the book you're reading and the book within the book: both novels are called "The Shadow of the Wind," both are the only known books in existence under the authors' names, and the main character is starting to resemble the author as well.

One more description to draw you in, taken from the Washington Post's review: "...If you love A.S. Byatt's Possession, Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude, the short stories of Borges, Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose, Arturo Perez-Reverte's The Club Dumas, or Paul Auster's 'New York' trilogy...then you will love The Shadow of the Wind.

Yes yes yes. Yes yes.(less)

Like this review? yes (13 people liked it)

add a comment

07/08/07

Lola rated it:

(review of isbn 0143034901)

bookshelves: fiction-literature, mystery-suspence

Read in May, 2007

I found this novel by accident, while quickly browsing shelves at the local library, and let me just say it was the best accidental find i've had in years. From the very first line to the end i loved it, and as a reader i am not easily pleased by anything. I love stories out of the ordinary that captivate my imagination and run away with it. That is exactly what The Shadow of The Wind did.

Right off the bat the plot intrigued me, Daniel Sempere is taken to the a secret labyrinth of fo...more

Like this review? yes (15 people liked it)

1 comment

09/05/07

Dracolibris rated it:

(review of isbn 0143034901)

bookshelves: 2007

Read in October, 2007

This book had me hooked when the young protagonist is taken to "The Cemetery of Forgotten Books" by his father in 1945 Barcelona. There he is allowed to choose one book that he will "adopt" and take care of, making sure it is never forgotten. He picks, seemingly at random, a book titled "The Shadow of the Wind" by an unknown author named Julian Carax.

But problems arise when, as the years go by, it becomes apparent that someone wants to make sure that...more

Like this review? yes (8 people liked it)

3 comments

01/05/09

Daniel rated it:

(review of isbn 0753819317)

bookshelves: novels, own

Read in December, 2006

After reading The Shadow of the Wind, I was left with somewhat mixed feelings. On the one hand, this is such a beautifully written book, and is in essence an ode to literature. On the other hand, there are some serious flaws which distracts from the whole experience.

The best thing about the book, in my opinion, is Zafon's skill in artistic writing. It reminds me of why I love to read in the first place, and makes me wish I could write as beautiful as this. The book contains lots of ...more After reading The Shadow of the Wind, I was left with somewhat mixed feelings. On the one hand, this is such a beautifully written book, and is in essence an ode to literature. On the other hand, there are some serious flaws which distracts from the whole experience.

The best thing about the book, in my opinion, is Zafon's skill in artistic writing. It reminds me of why I love to read in the first place, and makes me wish I could write as beautiful as this. The book contains lots of memorable quotes as well, definitely a good thing as far as I'm concerned.

So after about 50 pages in, I was ready to love this book as I seldom loved another book before. But as the story progressed, that resolution started to diminish slowly but surely. Ironically, one the more obvious flaws is Zafon's overuse of stylistic writing. It seems like everyone acts or talks in a very elaborate manner, even in the simplest of situations, and this can really become tiresome after a while.

The plot also isn't as ingenious as the hype would make you believe. Zafon does a good job creating a sense of mystery early on, and there are obvious parallels between the main character Daniel Sempere, and Julian Carax, the writer whose past he is trying to uncover. But ultimately, the stories of Daniel and Julian are seperate ones, and they just happen to interconnect with one another more by chance than by design.

By far the most troublesome flaw is the way the mysteries are "resolved". All too often, answers are given by having some side character or another tell his or her story for pages. Nowhere is this more evident than at the end of the book, where literally every single detail is revealed in the form of a (very) long letter, even details which the writer of the letter never could have known, since she wasn't even involved in those events. It's as if Zafon did not have a clue or the motivation to write a logical conclusion, and decided to just dump all the information in one place.

With a bit more attention to actual plot and character development, this could have been one of my favourite books. Nevertheless, I still enjoyed reading the Shadow of the Wind. It's just a shame that it falls some way short of its potential.(less)

Like this review? yes (10 people liked it)

1 comment

07/29/08

Annalisa rated it:

(review of isbn 0143034901)

bookshelves: book-club, historical-fiction, mystery-thriller, spanish-lit

Read in September, 2008

recommended to Annalisa by: book club
recommends it for: some language and sex

I read the opening few pages and instantly knew 3 things:
1. I was going to love this book.
2. I needed a whole pad of post-its to mark quotes.
3. I wanted to read this in Spanish for the rich poetry the language would add.

A young boy Daniel is taken by his father to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books and told to salvage a book which he must take stewardship over. He choses a novel—or maybe it chose him—that touches him, stirs his desire for literature, and forever en...more

Like this review? yes (5 people liked it)

7 comments

01/26/08

Suzy rated it:

(review of isbn 0143034901)

recommends it for: Patient readers

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

Like this review? yes (7 people liked it)

1 comment

10/05/07

Ben rated it:

(review of isbn 0143034901)

bookshelves: adultfic, booktalked

My favorite book since Blindness. A must read for bibliophiles and a pretty good mystery, if you like that sort of thing. Below is my booktalk for this one, also from library school.

The Shadow of the Wind, by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

On Daniel Sepere’s 10th birthday, his father takes him to a cemetery. Instead of holding people, however, this cemetery is an underground library, and it is the final resting place of books. It is the Cemetery of Forgotten books, and it houses b...more

Like this review? yes (4 people liked it)

add a comment

06/02/07

Monique Gerken rated it:

(review of isbn 0143034901)

Read in January, 2007

recommends it for: Everyone

This is my favorite book of all time! It is my goal in life to have everyone read this. There wasn't a dull moment and it keeps you guessing.

"The time is the 1950s; the place, Barcelona. Daniel Sempere, the son of a widowed bookstore owner, is 10 when he discovers a novel, The Shadow of the Wind, by Julián Carax. The novel is rare, the author obscure, and rumors tell of a horribly disfigured man who has been burning every copy he can find of Carax's novels. The man calls hims...more

Like this review? yes (5 people liked it)

add a comment

05/31/07

Kelly rated it:

bookshelves: did-not-finish, fiction

Read in June, 2007

recommends it for: gothic/Romantic lit freaks

Trying too hard. I wonder if I hadn't read this right after Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell if I would have liked it better. They were both trying to pay homage to the gothic/Romantic era writers, except that Strange and Norrell was brilliant, and this one was.. eh. I appreciated what the author was trying to do, but he didn't do it well enough to keep me reading. Yes, Romantic lit is full of cliche, but the thing is to do it interestingly and with enough wit to keep your audience interested. T...more

Like this review? yes (3 people liked it)

30 comments

02/27/08

Khaya rated it:

(review of isbn 1594200106)

bookshelves: favorites, greatlovestories, historicalfiction, miscellaneousgreatbooks

recommends it for: Everyone!

I loved this. It had so many elements of a great novel -- romance, mystery, richly drawn characters, humor, a story within a story (with both plots equally enjoyable and dovetailing in interesting ways), and great writing -- even in translation. Someone compared it to "History of Love." I sort of see the comparison, but I think I would compare it more to "The Thirteenth Tale" by Diane Setterfield. Anyway, I highly recommend it.

Like this review? yes (3 people liked it)

11 comments

09/26/08

Alethea rated it:

(review of isbn 1596061669)

bookshelves: audiobook, autographed, book-lovers, creepy, favorites, fiction, literary, love, page-turner, sexy, tearjerker, top-10-of-2008, what-a-twist

Read in September, 2008

recommended to Alethea by: random customer who wishes Zafon's newest novel were in Englis
recommends it for: book lovers

-*-The item pictured above is a special edition--I haven't received it yet! It comes out at the end of the year. I can't wait to see it.-*-

Wow. A must-read for book lovers, all the way to the Dramatis Personae at the end. Sumptuous prose and melodrama, a full cavalcade of carefully wrought characters, suspense, romance, gothic horror and best of all, it is read on CD by my new favorite audiobook reader, Jonathan Davis. (He also reads The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.) If I ever l...more

Like this review? yes (2 people liked it)

3 comments

07/05/08

Lolly rated it:

(review of isbn 0143034901)

bookshelves: fiction, historical-fiction

Ruiz Zafón has created a near-perfect novel: seductive and intriguing characters, a brilliant Spanish locale, and a lyrical style reminiscent of past literary masters. I found myself reading passages countless times just to savor the words. The language was so solid and mesmerizing, I could not believe it was a translation. The story lingers in your mind hours and days after reading it, and I become nostalgic; wishing I could read it again for the first time.

When Daniel Sempere first ...more

Like this review? yes (4 people liked it)

add a comment

09/08/07

Katie rated it:

(review of isbn 0143034901)

Read in July, 2008

This book tells the story of Daniel Sempere, the son of a rare book dealer who one day stumbles upon a mysterious book by a mysterious author called Julián Carax. Daniel tries to find out more of Carax’s work and discovers that almost all Carax’s novels are being systematically destroyed by a shadowy figure who refers to himself by the name of one of Carax’s characters. Thus is a mystery launched, as Daniel attempts to unravel Carax’s secrets and figure out why his novels are being burn...more This book tells the story of Daniel Sempere, the son of a rare book dealer who one day stumbles upon a mysterious book by a mysterious author called Julián Carax. Daniel tries to find out more of Carax’s work and discovers that almost all Carax’s novels are being systematically destroyed by a shadowy figure who refers to himself by the name of one of Carax’s characters. Thus is a mystery launched, as Daniel attempts to unravel Carax’s secrets and figure out why his novels are being burned.

I liked The Shadow of the Wind, but it wasn’t exactly the suspenseful read that the first few chapters led me to expect. The mystery moves forward in fits and starts; the book is like some overstuffed Gothic horror of a house—the literary equivalent of the Bates mansion, perhaps—and Zafón sometimes seems to get distracted within his own creation, dropping the story of Julián Carax to spend time with another one of his creations, or just to look around and describe what he sees. There is a lot of back and forth between the past and the present as well, and the loose organization of this can sometimes make it seem like Zafón is just making it up as he goes along, without any real plan for getting to the end.

Interestingly, underneath all the mystery and secrets and Gothic detail, The Shadow of the Wind seems mainly to be a book about the mistakes people make in their own lives and the lives of others, particularly about the mistakes that well-intentioned people make: misreading each other, remaining still when they should act, acting when they should remain still, failing to communicate, keeping secrets too long or revealing them to the wrong people. The narrative is littered with these mistakes; we see them compounding each other and rippling through time as events in Carax’s life slowly spiral downward. There’s a nice sense of inevitability to the book’s dramatic conclusion. Although it’s not terribly realistic, I felt that everything had to end as it did.

Perhaps the best thing about The Shadow of the Wind is its use of setting. Zafón has picked a rich setting for himself—Barcelona in the ’40s and ’50s, just after the Spanish Civil War and the Second World War—and he does a great job of evoking the city, the mood of the time, the architecture, etc.

I read the book in a translation by Lucia Graves. I don’t know whether I should blame Graves or Zafón, but the quality of prose in this book wasn’t that hot. I suspect that the occasional lapses into the purple are Zafón’s responsibility, and those actually work with the subject matter, but there are also some seriously cheesy/clunky sentences that I suspect are the result of clumsily translated idioms. I don’t think there’s another English translation out there, but if you’re thinking about reading this book and you happen to be fluent in Spanish, it might be worth trying it in the original.(less)

Like this review? yes (2 people liked it)

add a comment

01/29/08

Evelyn rated it:

(review of isbn 0143034901)

bookshelves: alltimefavorites, mystery

Read in January, 2004

On his eleventh birthday, Daniel is initiated into the secrets of the Cemetery of Forgotten Books. There, he is entranced by a book by Julian Carax whose other books are being systematically hunted down and burned by a mysterious stranger. Daniel's quest to discover why leads him into a labyrinth of love, murder, and hope.

Outstanding writing, unforgettable characters, and a multi-layered story with depths of meaning. This book is a treasure--suspenseful, poetic, and mysterious. For...more

Like this review? yes (2 people liked it)

1 comment

07/10/08

Erin and Jim rated it:

(review of isbn 0143034901)

Carlos Ruiz Zafon's "The Shadow of the Wind" is terrific. It could be described as a gothic, mysterious novel, but such adjectives are limiting. It's a moving story set in Barcelona, 1945. "Bea says that the art of reading is slowly dying, that it's an intimate ritual, that a book is a mirror that offers us only what we already carry inside us, that when we read, we do it with all our heart and mind, and great readers are becoming more scarce by the day." And that's just o...more

Like this review? yes (2 people liked it)

1 comment

03/03/09

Brad rated it:

(review of isbn 0143034901)

bookshelves: novel

Read in January, 2004

A bookworm's view of the Franco dictatorship set in a wonderfully atmospheric Barcelona. Although many aspects of life under the dictatorship serve as background and substance of the plot, bizarrely, Zafón makes no reference to the Catalan language whatsoever (the fact that it was officially banned and that many of his characters would have spoken it anyway in numerous circumstances) as part of the oppressive and subversive practices that Zafón is otherwise so attentive to. That Zafón, a nati...more

Like this review? yes (1 person liked it)

add a comment

10/20/08

cheeseflavoredcorncurls rated it:

(review of isbn 0143034901)

bookshelves: i-so-recommend-you-to-read-this

Read in September, 2008

recommended to cheeseflavoredcorncurls by: my brother
recommends it for: anyone who is yearning for a good read..

i read this book in two days--which means that i really liked it!! the book was very engaging and the lead character, Daniel, was very easy to like. the characters in this book were molded well and the story was fast paced, which i liked very much. nothing like a fast paced story to get one's heart pumping. ahaha. anyway, i really liked it.

(im not very good with reviews, am i? wahh. ill get better in time. ehehe)

Like this review? yes (2 people liked it)

1 comment

02/17/09

Sherrie Phillips rated it:

(review of isbn 0143034901)

recommends it for: Everyone

A co-worker recommended this to me. He told me that I would be captivated within the first 2-3 pages. I think it only took 2-3 paragraphs. I love writing that evokes feeling as well as painting a picture. I want to be moved by the language and this book did that for me. The story starts with a father who instructs his son to pick a book from the Cemetary of Forgotten books that he would be the caretaker of and ensure the book lives on. The boys fascination with the book and its author takes hi...more

Like this review? yes (1 person liked it)

add a comment

02/14/07

Courtney rated it:

(review of isbn 0143034901)

bookshelves: fiction

A boy, a true reader and bibliophile, finds a mysterious and compelling book. He is so taken by the story that he sets out to find the author, a man presumed dead. Strange things begin happening. A mystery and a love story - conventional love, the love of books. I really enjoyed it.

Like this review? yes (2 people liked it)

add a comment