I came to this book because it was recommended by Juan, one of my favourite Youtube Spanish teachers. In its original language, it's called La sombra del viento; it was written by Carlos Ruiz Zafon (1964-2020); and it was published in 2001.

It's quite a long book, and I started reading it just before we headed off for the UK. During a period when I had less reading time than usual, it would have been good if I could have just cantered through it. But I found the Spanish -- more colloquial than I had anticipated -- surprisingly difficult. The book therefore ended up being stretched over a much longer period than it should have been, and my reading of it was interrupted by another couple of works that came my way. I always feel I need to apologize to a book for reading it like that. And, obviously, everything that follows has to be interpreted through that lens...

Most definitely, it was gripping. It's a book within a book, a literary mystery story. Daniel Sempere, the 10-year-old son of a Barcelona bookseller, is taken by his father to the labyrinthine Cemetery of Forgotten Books, where he chooses a work called The Shadow of the Wind.

He becomes fascinated -- obsessed? -- by Julian Carax, its mysterious author, and by the fate of his oeuvre, which someone seems to have set out to systematically hunt down and destroy. The story follows Daniel as, bit by bit, over the best part of a decade, he pieces together the story of Carax's turbulent life. As he finds out more, strange parallels start to emerge with Daniel's own life, and shadowy and very dangerous characters start to close in on him.

Zafon's tale is (pleasantly) Gothic in character, by turns grotesque, melodramatic, and evocative. Ancient book repositories; deserted houses festooned with memories of dastardly deeds; shrivelled women closeted in institutions that could have come straight out of Dickens -- it all makes for an interesting if somewhat implausible read.

The Barcelona of the pre-war, civil-war, and early-Franco periods is very atmospherically painted. There is much rain, much fog... But then there are also cosy cafes, and elegant villas, and clanking trams...


Barcelona, 2020

Also to be commended is Zafon's insistence on the power of books. When Daniel is taken to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, he is told: "Every book, every volume that you see, has a soul. The soul of the one who wrote it, and the soul of those who read it and lived and dreamed of it." Carax is not even a successful author (he sells hardly anything), and yet when the "right" people find his books, they are enthralled. Books provide refuge. Books provide magic.

Indeed, Michael Kerrigan argues that some of the book's flaws arise from too much of an appreciation for words: "A trivial yet revealing mannerism is the frequency with which a character reads some book or other deep into the night, enthralled, only for the sun to come up on cue as the last page is reached: the whole universe, it seems, is at the service of the act of reading." Nevertheless, Zafon's "conviction of the importance of literature in real life comes shining through". I started The Shadow of the Wind while I was listening to Do Not Say We Have Nothing (yes, THAT long ago...), and it was interesting that both novels attested to the power of the book, the power of recollection, and the importance of the marks we make in time through writing.


I love books, and books about books...

The Shadow of the Wind is part thriller, part historical novel, part Bildungsroman, and part Gothic melodrama, but I personally didn't object to this mixing of genres in the way that some reviewers did.

In all, then, there was much to enjoy. On the other side of the ledger, there were issues, I felt...

I found the female characters very sketchy. True, Daniel lost his mother at an early age, and therefore has really zero experience of relating to women. But even so... None of the women comes across as a well-rounded character. On the one hand, women are beautiful, child-bearing, and tragic -- but little else (the possible exception here is Julian's mother, who is all these things, but also interesting and resilient). On the other hand, they are comedic (facial hair seems to feature bizarrely frequently...)

The male characters are more interesting, although they too are often larger than life. Fermin, a former political prisoner whom Daniel and his father rescue from the street and employ, is feisty and funny, and becomes Daniel's staunch protector and friend (although he is not well positioned to help Daniel develop more sophisticated ideas about women...) Julian's stepfather is another slightly bizarre character, who seems to lurch from being grotesquely evil to at least embryonically sympathetic, without any real explanation as to why that development is taking place. The dastardly Fumero, a coldly sadistic police officer, is indefatigable in his pursuit of victims that he selects largely on the basis of hurt pride and jealousy, but I suppose that is not too unbelievable...

Then there's the structure. After many chapters where we gain much enjoyment from watching our heroes painstakingly following clues, we suddenly have an all-revealing letter from a dead woman dumped upon us... Written at greater length and with more sophistication than we would expect from her circumstances (she fears she might be imminently wiped out), it fills in most of the rest of the story of Julian Carax, and feels just a tad too much like a cop-out.

Given my reaction, I guess it's not surprising that critical opinion is divided.



But if you judge by sales and enthusiasm, then you'll reach a much less guarded conclusion. Writing in 2020, Laura Fernandez noted that more than 10 million copies of The Shadow of the Wind had been sold across the world... It sold 300,000 copies in its first year. In 2003 it arrived in Germany, which is where the real fever started. That's when people started talking about the "most successful Spanish novel since Don Quixote", and thanks to some unstinting praise from then German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, another 200,000 copies flew off the shelves.

It was published in English in 2004, and received praise from Stephen King (much appreciated by Zafon, a fan of King's).

Zafon himself, a reserved man, was overwhelmed by the reception given to The Shadow of the Wind. It was his first book for adult audiences, and when it sold its first million copies, he explained that his writing "represented a personal commitment", and this book was "the first work in which I have written what I wanted to write".

The book became the first of a quartet (entitled The Cemetery of Forgotten Books), and in total Zafon's oeuvre has now sold more than 35 million copies in more than 40 countries...

So it could be that I'll be dipping my toe back in the water sometime... Only, the next one I'll read overnight, and finish with sunrise...