The Shadow of the Wind, by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

This multi-layered novel is, among other things, an homage to books. It opens in Barcelona in 1945 with a ten-year-old boy’s visit to The Cemetery of Forgotten Books, a repository of what may be the only extant copies of books modern and ancient. Wandering this labyrinth, young Daniel Sempere (the Latin semper means “always”) chooses The Shadow of the Wind, a 1935 novel by Julian Carax.

"I couldn't help thinking that if I, by pure chance, had found a whole universe in a single unknown book, buried in that endless necropolis, tens of thousands more would remain unexplored, forgotten forever. I felt myself surrounded by millions of abandoned pages, by worlds and souls without an owner sinking in an ocean of darkness, while the world that throbbed outside the library seemed to be losing its memory, day after day, unknowingly, feeling all the wiser the more it forgot." 

We are reminded of the library of Borges, an analogue for infinity; of The Pile of Forgotten Works in Richard Brautigan's In Watermelon Sugar; and of the warnings of Ray Bradbury whose stories so often turn on how diminishing readership dooms both books and writers to oblivion.

Daniel, swept up by the story he has chosen, seeks to learn more about novel and author, but soon encounters layers of secrecy - someone is destroying every copy of every book Carax published - his may be the only one left.  About Carax himself, little is known - he lived in Paris, having fled Franco’s Spain, but perhaps he returned to Barcelona to be with the woman he loved.

That story is also a mystery - she died young, perhaps at the hands of her father who forbade her to see Carax and may have locked her up to enforce his will. As Daniel reaches his late teens, his life begins to parallel the writer’s, with a love affair kept secret from the girl’s disapproving father. Daniel’s obsession with Carax grows, and his quest is interleaved with the rightists’ grip on Spain, and the danger to writers and artists arising from their intolerance. A deserted mansion offers clues and a trysting place, but this very place resonates eerily with the death of Carax’s amour. Dangers of all kinds, political and otherworldly, beset our young hero. Unlikely alliances - with a drunken bum who turns out to know a great deal and has survived the worst the regime could inflict; with his own father, a bookseller; with a woman whose husband published Carax’s books; with reprobates and colorful characters from society’s dregs - aid his search, but the more he learns, the more he puts himself and those he loves at risk.

Tight plotting and powerful adversaries keep the suspense at a boil - I read the book in two sittings, which enabled me to keep track of a cast of dozens and the turnings of fate that ensnare them. Zafon does a masterful job tying up every loose end, often in surprising ways. Equally evocative are his intimate descriptions of Barcelona, a city I now feel I have sojourned in, and would like to visit bodily. The impacts on society of the political struggles in Spain are vividly illuminated - without getting mired in timelines and elections, Zafon creates an atmosphere of tension and uncertainty leavened by the ascension of cruel men - we understand that writing is a perilous pursuit, and curiosity about the past possibly fatal. 

A good story offers a satisfying resolution, and The Shadow of the Wind delivers on this promise. If you want to curl up with an engrossing book, this one’s for you!