The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

The Shadow of the Wind

Carlos Ruiz Zafon

This book is full of every delight that a novel could possibly offer. A mystery, a strange adventure, a tender coming of age drama, set in a city dense with people and tragedy and weather. The book is full of powerful ideas, glittering humour and packed with startling characters. It takes you to a real place, and lets you right in to its heart.

Extract
That evening in early summer, as I walked back through the somber, treacherous twilight of Barcelona, I could not blot out Clara's story about her father's disappearance. In my world death was like a nameless and incomprehensible hand, a door-to-door salesman who took away mothers, beggars, or ninety-year old neighbours, like a hellish lottery. But I couldn't absorb the idea that death could actually walk by my side, with a human face and a heart that was poisoned with hatred, that death could be dressed in a uniform or a raincoat, queue up at a cinema, laugh in bars, or take his children out for a walk in the morning, and then, in the afternoon, make someone disappear in the dungeons of Montjuic Castle or in the common grave with no name or ceremony.
Parallels
  • Le Grand Meaulnes by Alain Fournier
  • The Leopard by Guiseppi de Lampedusa
  • The Magus by John Fowles
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Explicit sexual content