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The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón
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The Shadow of the Wind (2001)

by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

Other authors: See the other authors section.

Series: The Cemetery of Forgotten Books (1)

MembersReviewsPopularityAverage ratingMentions
16,96262196 (4.12)868
Recently added bysrrygottarun, bemidbar, eliang9, private library, arianta, RickK, Michael_Gallagher
21st century (55) Barcelona (768) book club (74) books (390) books about books (240) fiction (1,777) gothic (128) historical (89) historical fiction (294) history (52) libraries (66) literature (152) love (97) magical realism (108) mystery (806) novel (275) own (73) read (202) Roman (149) romance (95) Spain (829) Spanish (257) Spanish Civil War (105) Spanish Fiction (55) Spanish literature (193) suspense (109) thriller (117) to-read (206) translation (99) unread (80)
  1. 217
    The Angel's Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafón (phoenix7g, orange_epsilon)
    orange_epsilon: Prequel to The Shadow of the Wind set in Barcelona in the 1920s and 1930s. If you enjoyed the first one, you should give this one a try.
  2. 153
    The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield (rmjp518, starfishian, elizabeth.a.coates)
    elizabeth.a.coates: Both centre around books/literature, both are eloquently written, both have an element of mystery
  3. 165
    The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova (robynlinden, GodOfTheAnthill)
    GodOfTheAnthill: Both mystery novels with a similar tone and atmosphere
  4. 70
    One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez (derelicious)
  5. 71
    If on a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino (SylviaO)
    SylviaO: Another tale about a mysterious book and a reader searching for answers.
  6. 60
    People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks (susiesharp, BookshelfMonstrosity)
  7. 50
    The Prisoner of Heaven by Carlos Ruiz Zafón (guurtjesboekenkast)
  8. 40
    The Little Book by Selden Edwards (Othemts)
  9. 40
    The City of Dreaming Books by Walter Moers (bookmomo)
    bookmomo: If you want to read more (and better!) about the love of books and reading
  10. 30
    The Club Dumas by Arturo Pérez-Reverte (jhedlund, phoenix7g, Cecilturtle, TAir)
    phoenix7g: Mystery and books.
  11. 31
    The Book on Fire by Keith Miller (infiniteletters)
  12. 20
    A Small Death in Lisbon by Robert Wilson (ehines)
  13. 10
    Soldiers of Salamis by Javier Cercas (caflores)
  14. 10
    The Calligrapher's Secret by Rafik Schami (spiphany)
  15. 10
    Stoner by John Williams (vivas)
    vivas: Libro excepcional,escrito de forma sencilla,culta y facil de entender
  16. 43
    Inkheart by Cornelia Funke (missmaddie)
  17. 32
    The Rule of Four by Ian Caldwell (sweetiegherkin)
    sweetiegherkin: The mystery contained in a book is at the heart of both these thrillers.
  18. 00
    City of Marvels by Eduardo Mendoza (caflores)
  19. 00
    Barcelona Amor Final by Joan Margarit (CitizenMarc)
    CitizenMarc: If you love the city, both these books bring alive aspects of its character that will evoke fond memories, or intrigue you.
  20. 00
    Ghostwritten by David Mitchell (derelicious)

(see all 26 recommendations)

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English (507)  Dutch (26)  Spanish (21)  French (17)  Italian (13)  German (9)  Catalan (7)  Swedish (4)  Finnish (4)  Portuguese (3)  Portuguese (Portugal) (3)  Danish (2)  Hungarian (1)  Portuguese (Brazil) (1)  All languages (618)
Showing 1-5 of 507 (next | show all)
I read The Shadow of the Wind for book club last month, and I was on a tight deadline to get it read before the meeting (I finished it with just minutes to spare). It was my own fault. I spent a few days reading slowly through the first hundred pages wondering what made this book so special that everyone I knew who had read it was recommending it to me. When I finally got past those first hundred pages (the morning of book club) I was hooked on the story and hardly put the book down until I had finished it.

This book required a little more time and attention than popular fiction, mainly because it is the sort of mystery in which tiny details are given throughout, and most of them play an important part in piecing everything together by the end of the book.

When I say that it's a mystery, I don't mean it in the traditional "whodunit" sense of the word. The mystery is not just about solving a murder, but about reconstructing the story of a life. This book is a complex tale composed of stories within stories. Throughout the book the reader finds out bits and pieces of the mystery of Julian Carax; who he was and how his life affected those around him. Those facts are not always given in sequence, however, and so there is a lot for the reader to speculate on and guess at while reading.

The Shadow of the Wind is full of surprises, and the characters (most of them completely fascinating) are not always who they seem to be. Although one character, Fumero, is consistent throughout. He is truly one of the most vile and despicable villains I have encountered in literature.

When this book was recommended to me I had been told I would love it because I love books. While this is true, I would also recommend this story to anyone who likes a good complex mystery, is interested in what life was like after the Spanish civil war, enjoys good historical fiction, or is interested in reading a finely crafted story.

If you liked this book then you may also enjoy Stone's Fall by Iain Pears. It does not have a storyline about books or book stores, but it does contain an equally intriguing and well-written mystery.

Carlos Ruiz Zafon has also published a prequel to The Shadow of the Wind titled The Angel's Game. ( )
  akreese | May 16, 2013 |
This book has brought a lot of people great joy and pleasure, but these reviews are a personal opinion and to me this is just a series of endless cliches, mostly ripped from World Cinema of the eighties and nineties.

For example: Young man spying on older girl he's in love with only to find she's doing it with a bully who at some point in the future will beat him up/attempt to kill him and so on. And there are many, many more, all painfully predictable.

I could go on but I feel bad enough ripping on something that so many people have enjoyed. Me, I threw the thing away about half way through when I found myself rolling my eyes too often. ( )
  Hubster | May 12, 2013 |
This book has brought a lot of people great joy and pleasure, but these reviews are a personal opinion and to me this is just a series of endless cliches, mostly ripped from World Cinema of the eighties and nineties.

For example: Young man spying on older girl he's in love with only to find she's doing it with a bully who at some point in the future will beat him up/attempt to kill him and so on. And there are many, many more, all painfully predictable.

I could go on but I feel bad enough ripping on something that so many people have enjoyed. Me, I threw the thing away about half way through when I found myself rolling my eyes too often. ( )
  Hubster | May 12, 2013 |
This book... this book! I don't even know where to start. It came out of nowhere and swept me away right from page one.

I have typed out several variations of a paragraph trying to describe how amazing and heartbreaking this book was, but none of them did it justice. It's one part love story, one part mystery, with dashes of horror and modern fantasy. And it's amazing. Read it. ( )
1 vote | May 8, 2013 | edit |
In The Shadow of the Wind Carlos Ruiz Zafón interweaves the threads of different stories into an intricate pattern forming the whole of the novel. Several plots are running side by side or one within the other, but they are all well balanced and the story gowes smoothly despite all.

The story revolving around Daniel Sempere and his search for traces of the writer Julián Carax is set in Barcelona. It starts in summer 1945. His father, the owner of a little bookshop, takes the ten-year-old to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, a secret place in the old town to which only the initiated have access. There the boy is allowed to take one book from the shelves under the condition that he promises to be its guardian for the rest of his life. He picks a volume with a handsome binding that shows the name Julián Carax and the title The Shadow of the Wind inscribed on its cover. Of course, Daniel begins to read the book as soon as he is back at home in his room above the bookshop. The novel engrosses the boy and he spends the whole night reading it until the end. Then he searches for other books of the writer, but only encounters mystery because Julián Carax and his books seem to have disappeared without trace. After his initial enthusiasm Daniel slowly forgets about the book.

Years later a mysterious man smelling of burnt paper is after Daniel and claims the book from him. This is the starting point of a new quest that reveals the tragic history of Julián Carax, his love and his writings. Daniel is drawn dangerously deep into the life of the author, but along the way he grows up, makes friends with a former political prisoner of the Franco regime and meets his love Bea.

For the full review please visit my blog at http://edith-lagraziana.blogspot.co.at/2013/04/the-shadow-of-wind-by-carlos-ruiz... ( )
1 vote LaGraziana | May 3, 2013 |
Showing 1-5 of 507 (next | show all)
It's lowdown and lazy, but here goes: ''Gabriel García Márquez meets Umberto Eco meets Jorge Luis Borges'' for a sprawling magic show, exasperatingly tricky and mostly wonderful, by the Spanish novelist Carlos Ruiz Zafón. The three illustrious meeters must surely have been drinking and they weave about a little, but steady remarkably as the pages go by.
 
The Shadow of the Wind is a dream date for those who love books.... For fans of Jorge Luis Borges, Umberto Eco and other writers who craft twisting and turning plots with complex characterization, The Shadow of the Wind is not to be missed.
 

» Add other authors (38 possible)

Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
Ruiz Zafón, Carlosprimary authorall editionsconfirmed
Geel, NellekeTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Graves, LuciaTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Härkönen, TarjaTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Sezzi, LiaTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed

Has the (non-series) sequel

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People/Characters
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Important events
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Epigraph
Dedication
For Joan Ramón Planas,
who deserves better
First words
I still remember the day my father took me to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books for the first time.
Quotations
Sometimes what matters isn't what one gives but what one gives up.

Paris requires more than two days. It won't listen to reason.

Age -- the price we all must pay.

Army, Marriage, the Church, and Banking: the Four Horsemen of the Apocolypse.
"Every book, every volume you see here has a soul. The soul of the person who wrote it and of those who read it and lived and dreamed with it."
His mouth was glued to a half-smoked cigar that seemed to grow out of his mustache. It was hard to tell whether he was asleep or awake, because he breathed like most people snore.
When a library disappears, or a book shop closes down, when a book is cosigned to oblivion, those of us who know this place, its guardians, make sure that it gets here. In this place, books no longer remembered by anyone, books that are lost in time, live forever, waiting for the day when they will reach a new reader's hands. In the shop we buy and sell them, but in truth books have no owner. Every book you see here has been someone's best friend. Now they have only us, Daniel.
"[W]e exist as long as somebody remembers us."
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Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0143034901, Paperback)

Barcelona, 1945—A great world city lies shrouded in secrets after the war, and a boy mourning the loss of his mother finds solace in his love for an extraordinary book called The Shadow of the Wind, by an author named Julian Carax. When the boy searches for Carax’s other books, it begins to dawn on him, to his horror, that someone has been systematically destroying every copy of every book the man has ever written. Soon the boy realizes that The Shadow of the Wind is as dangerous to own as it is impossible to forget, for the mystery of its author’s identity holds the key to an epic story of murder, madness, and doomed love that someone will go to any lengths to keep secret.

(retrieved from Amazon Mon, 20 Sep 2010 00:26:02 -0400)

(see all 3 descriptions)

A boy named Daniel selects a novel from a library of rare books, enjoying it so much that he searches for the rest of the author's works, only to discover that someone is destroying every book the author has ever written.

» see all 14 descriptions

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