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The Shadow of the Wind (The Cemetery of Forgotten Books, #1)

by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

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Reading for the 4th time

read in January 2015

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rob said: " I have now read “The Shadow of the Wind” three times over a period of 6 or 7 years. Each time I find more and more in the novel. It is a wonderful book. I have since read the 3 ‘sequels’ – “The Angel’s Game”, “The Prisoner of Heaven” and “The Labyrin I have now read “The Shadow of the Wind” three times over a period of 6 or 7 years. Each time I find more and more in the novel. It is a wonderful book. I have since read the 3 ‘sequels’ – “The Angel’s Game”, “The Prisoner of Heaven” and “The Labyrinth of the Spirits”. I put inverted commas around the word ‘sequels’ because they are more branches than true sequels. In the succeeding novels, Zafon expands the stories of characters in previous stories. There is only a little sequence in these novels.

“The Shadow of the Wind” is at its core a love story. Firstly it’s about the love of the central character Daniel Sempere for his eventual wife Beatriz. (Sorry – that is a bit of a spoiler.) Daniel is a teenager at the start of the novel, working in his father’s bookshop. However this novel and its successors are also stories of love for Zafon’s home, Barcelona, and his Catalan culture. Even though the novels recount horrible periods in Barcelona’s history, Zafon’s love for the city shines through.

Zafon tells the story of Daniel and Beatriz (Bea) against a back story of Daniel’s fascination with a mysterious writer, Julian Carax. Daniel discovers a book by Carax (called “The Shadow of the Wind”) in the cemetery of forgotten books, an enormous library housed in an old Barcelona mansion with an interior straight out of the drawings of MC Escher. This is a place known only to Barcelona’s bibliophiles, kept hidden and secure from most people … and especially the powers that be.

We soon learn that a mysterious being (with heavy Satanic overtones) has been searching systematically for all of Carax’s books. When found, he has burned them.

The novel revolves around Daniels’ search for Carax and his interactions with the ‘satanic’ being. The novel does have some murmurings of Gothic horror. However, there is also some comic influence. That comes in the person of Fermin, someone who has been tortured brutally by the Fascist regime, has escaped and through various means ends up working for Daniel and his father in their bookshop. With comedy, however, comes menace in the form of Fermin’s constant bete noire Inspector Fumero, a notorious supporter of Franco’s regime and a known killer.

So the novel mixes romance with mystery with crime with political machinations with elements of Gothic horror with elements of Catalan resistance to the Franco Fascists. As such, I think it defies categorisation into any specific genre. What does shine through is Zafon’s love for Cataluña and Barcelona, and his revulsion for the Franco regime.

The motto of FC Barcelona is "Més que un club" ("More than a club"). This novel provides ample illustration of how that motto and feeling for Catalan culture may have arisen and been reinforced.

Politics apart, this is a ripping read. The pace never falters. Zafon has a sardonic and often very funny sense of humour which ripples through the text. This is one of the most enjoyable novels I have read and re-read in many years. ...more "

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(page 233 of 520)
— Jul 13, 2026 10:42PM

Jul 07, 2026 03:42AM · see review