Oddly I do read books that are not Hunchback or written by Hugo or French lit. I’m a rather a slow reader because I tend to read book before bed and I actually read this book awhile ago but it was great and I highly recommend it.
The book is The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón. It a mystery set in the 1940s-50s surrounding a book and the author of the book. I don’t typically read books like this but I greatly enjoyed it. I even sort of got the a figured out a but of the mystery more the “who” not the “why.” Maybe it wasn’t hard guess but still I recommend the reading it. Here’s the Amazon summary.
“Barcelona, 1945: Just after the war, a great world city lies in shadow, nursing its wounds, and a boy named Daniel awakes on his 11th 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.
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 (Amazon)
I only read the first book so I can only recommend that one but I would read other books which are separate stories.
Have you read The Shadow of the Wind? What did you think? Let me know!
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