Barcelona, 1945-just after the war, a great world city lies in shadow, nursing its wounds, and a guy named Daniel awakes on his eleventh birthday to come across that he can’t remember his mother’s face. To gaming console his only child, Daniel’s widowed father, an antiquarian reserve dealer, initiates him into the secret from the Cemetery of Ignored Books, a library tended by Barcelona’s guild of rare-book sellers like a repository for books overlooked from the world, looking forward to someone who will value about The Shadow of the Wind them again. Daniel’s dad coaxes him to choose a volume from your spiraling labyrinth of shelves, one that, it is said, will have a particular meaning for him. And Daniel therefore loves the novel he selects, The Shadow of the Blowing wind by one Julian Carax, that he sets out to get the relax of Carax’s function. To his shock, he discovers that somebody continues to be systematically destroying every copy of every reserve this author offers written. In fact, he may have the last one in existence. Before Daniel knows it his apparently innocent quest has opened a door into one of Barcelona’s darkest secrets, an epic tale of murder, magic, madness and doomed like. And before long he realizes that if he doesn’t find out the truth about Julian Carax, he and the ones closest to him are affected horribly.

As with all of the astounding novels, The Shadow of the Wind sends the mind groping for comparisons-The Crimson Petal and the White? The books of Arturo Pérez-Reverte? Of Victor Hugo? Love in enough time of Cholera?-but in the long run, as with all incredible novels, zero comparison can suffice. As you leading Spanish reviewer had written, “The originality of Ruiz Zafón’s tone of voice is bombproof and shows a diabolical skill. The Shadow of the Wind announces a trend in Spanish literature.” An uncannily absorbing historical secret, a heart-piercing romance, and a shifting homage to the mystical power of books, The Darkness of the Wind is a triumph of the storyteller’s art.