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The Shadow of the Wind: A Novel |  | Author: Carlos Ruiz Zafon
Creator: Lucia Graves
Publisher: Penguin Press
List Price: $24.95
Buy Used: $11.87
as of 11/22/2009 19:47 CST details
You Save: $13.08 (52%)
New (24) Used (33) Collectible (15) from $11.87
Seller: gdwil
Rating:  619 reviews
Sales Rank: 30048
Media: Hardcover
Edition: First Edition
Pages: 486
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.7
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.6
ISBN: 1594200106
Dewey Decimal Number: 863.64
EAN: 9781594200106
ASIN: 1594200106
Publication Date: April 12, 2004
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product 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 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.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 619
 Better than his second novel... November 12, 2009
Librum (CA, USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
...but not by far. TSOEW might have fared well at novella length. Foreshadowing Zafon's second novel, this one, too, is completely bloated -- hundreds of pages longer than it should have been. If endless doors "ajar", sunrises poured like molten copper/gold/tin/iron across blood-red/coal-black skies, putrid/stinking/rancid flesh, and shadows -- my God, the shadows! -- are your thing, and if you love a pat ending, occasional moralizing and a pretense to intellectualism, then you're in for a treat. The second star in my rating is by comparison with Zafon's truly unbearable followup novel, and because the story at the core of TSOEW -- buried under Zafon's gloppily layered prose -- is at least a clever one.
What Borgesian book adventure will Zafon think up next? For my part, I doubt I'll make it past the title.
 Did What They Said November 12, 2009
Yellow Dog's friend (Atlanta, GA)
Product as advertised...surprised that shipping from GA to GA resident took as long as shipping cross country.
 Excellent for a first Kindle book! November 8, 2009
Jorge Ossanai Jr.
Yes, it was my first Kindle book. Downloaded in less than 20 seconds! Read in less than 2 days! Great book and experience.
Very good...Great? November 6, 2009
Randy Cook (Newtown, PA United States)
'The Shadow of the Wind' is a wonderful tale of Daniel Sempre, a young boy in post war Barcelona. The boy has recently lost his mother and is having a difficult time coping with the lose. Daniel's father is a book seller and finds it hard to relate to Daniel. After a bad night, Daniel is taken by his father to the Cemetary of Forgotten Books. Daniel is told to find a book that he will be responsible for taking care of.
Daniel finds a book which he reads and loves. When Daniel tries to find more work by the author, he discovers that there is a mysterious poerson who has been tracking down all of the works of this author and burning them. Is his book the last one? Why are the books being burned? Where has the author disappeared to?
The story takes us in and around post war Barcelona during the reign of Franco. Daniel delves ever deeper into the mystery and it does not just involve the missing author. The mystery begins to extend around Daniel, a friend's family (who's daughter he begins to fall in love with), and the missing authro's story.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book and was pleasantly surprised. I stop short of saying it tops Dickens and the other authors Zafon is compared to.
Too many... Too much... November 3, 2009
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Too many useless twists and convenient connections between charactors. Too many pregnant teenage girls with enraged fathers. Too much pointless secrecy between people who claim to be seeking the same end when a little information sharing would have cleared things right up. And too much rain. Apparently the rain in Spain falls constantly.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 619
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