Carlos Ruiz Zafón

The Shadow Of The Wind — (2004) Publisher: A stunning literary thriller in the tradition of Umberto Eco. The discovery of a forgotten book leads to a hunt for an elusive author who may or may not still be alive... Hidden in the heart of the old city of Barcelona is the 'cemetery of lost books', a labyrinthine library of obscure and forgotten titles that have long gone out of print. To this library, a man brings his 10-year-old son Daniel one cold morning in 1945. Daniel is allowed to choose one book from the shelves and pulls out 'La Sombra del Viento' by Julian Carax. But as he grows up, several people seem inordinately interested in his find. Then, one night, as he is wandering the old streets once more, Daniel is approached by a figure who reminds him of a character from La Sombra del Viento, a character who turns out to be the devil. This man is tracking down every last copy of Carax's work in order to burn them. What begins as a case of literary curiosity turns into a race to find out the truth behind the life and death of Julian Carax and to save those he left behind. A page-turning exploration of obsession in literature and love, and the places that obsession can lead.

The Angel's Game — (2009) Publisher: The Angel's Game opens in Barcelona in the 1920s. David Martin is a young man working in a newspaper office. But late one night the editor of the paper has a crisis — they have just had to drop six pages from the weekend edition and he has only a matter of hours to fill them. With most of the staff already home, he turns to David and asks if he can write a short story. If it is good, he will publish more. The resulting story is a huge success and becomes David's first step on the path to a career as an author. As David's books gain a certain recognition, he receives a mysterious letter from a French editor called Andreas Corelli who wants to help him achieve his ambitions. But the character is not all that he seems and soon David has entered a pact that will lead him question everything he values. He is also befriended by the bookseller Sempere (the grandfather of Daniel from Shadow) who introduces him to the strange world of the Cemetery of Forgotten Books. The Angel's Game is a tale of lost souls and literary intrigue; a book steeped in the world of writing, with references to Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Great Expectations.It is about the demons a writer faces;but also a page-turning mystery and a love story set against the creaking mansions and mysterious alleyways at the dark heart of Barcelona.

The Angel's Game

I had intended to simply glance at the first page of The Angel’s Game and then set it aside to finish other books I was reading, but the first paragraph ensnared me:

A writer never forgets the first time he accepted a few coins or a word of praise in exchange for a story. He will never forget the sweet poison of vanity in his blood, and the belief that, if he succeeds in not letting anyone discover his lack of talent, the dream of literature will provide him with a roof over his head, a hot meal at the end of the day, and what he covets the most: his name printed on a miserable piece of paper that surely will outlive him. A writer is condemned to remember that moment, because from then on he is doomed and his soul has a price.

The Angel’s Game follows up on the promise of its first paragraph with great skill. The book is a fantasy, a mystery and mainstream fiction about a writer’s life all at once. It is an iteration of the legend of Faust, but it seems wholly new in the hands of Carlos Ruiz Zafón and his talented translator, Lucia Graves.

The narrator of the book is David Martin, who first gets paid for his writing in December 1917 by a newspaper. He had been hanging around the paper since he was a newly orphaned child. First he merely brought coffee and cigarettes to the writers, but in recent years he has acted as assistant to Pedro Vidal, the star crime writer and a member of Barcelona’s rich aristocracy. Vidal informs the editor of the paper that David can write crime stories, and the editor decides to give him a chance. David is soon established as a crime reporter by day and a crime fiction writer by night, “burning up my brain.”

Before long, a mysterious admirer sends David a note inviting him to a “surprise” at a particular address. When David arrives, he finds he is in a particularly high class bordello, and the prostitute whose services have been engaged for him bears a striking resemblance to the “ineffable femme fatale Chloe,” the heroine in his ongoing fiction series. He spends an incredible night with her, losing his virginity in the process (he is 19 years old). But when he tries again a few days later to find the same bordello, he learns that the building in which he spent his night of ecstasy burned down 15 years earlier. How was this possible? And who is the mysterious “A.C.” who bought him the evening of pleasure?

All of this is essentially by way of preface. David goes on to describe how he comes to write for a pair of publishers named Barrido and Escobillas, who run a shady operation but publish David’s City of the Damned, written in “the baroque, bloody and delirious Gran Guignol tradition.” Martin buys a house that has long fascinated him and begins writing at a furious pace.

But “A.C.” hasn’t disappeared forever. To the contrary, he soon reveals himself as Andreas Corelli, a character that haunts the remainder of the book — and David, for the rest of his life. Ultimately he offers David a writing contract, stating that he is a French publisher — but the project he has in mind is definitely a very strange one, one that could change the shape of the world if it is completed appropriately. Corelli offers David something he can’t refuse in exchange in a dream sequence — or is it a dream? — that seems to effect on David a physical change that lengthens his life past his allotted span of years, the most explicit echo of Faust in the book.

Things do not go well for David once he accepts the contract, however, even though some things inexplicably seem to start going very well indeed. Obstacles to his writing seem to fall away, though not naturally; in fact, violence suddenly seems to start haunting David’s footsteps. What is Corelli’s role in all this? And who, exactly, is he? David can’t explain completely, not even when he becomes the focus of a police investigation. In fact, whether Corelli actually exists comes into some doubt.

There is much more to the story. For instance, David meets Isabella, who loves his writing and wants to write herself; she becomes his secretary, but the relationship is much more complicated than that. David is in love with Cristina, a beautiful young woman who is the daughter of Don Pedro’s chauffeur, and Cristina seems to return his affections, but she clearly believes she has obligations elsewhere. And David’s house seems to haunt him with its history of another writer, apparently also encouraged and employed by Andreas Corelli. The Cemetery of Forgotten Books, which Zafón first wrote about in his earlier work, The Shadow of the Wind, makes an important appearance. And Barcelona, in all its magnificence and tawdriness, is as much a character as is any human in these pages.

I was fascinated by The Angel’s Game from cover to cover. It held me in thrall for the entire week over which I read it; I lived there far more than I did in the world where I was going about my usual business. I am still puzzling over the ending, fascinated by the way Zafón manages to wrap up all the threads — but doing so the way a magician makes a scarf appear and then disappear again, leaving one to wonder just exactly what one has just read.

The Angel’s Game lies on the borderline of many different genres: mystery, fantasy and mainstream literature. It is beautifully written (and kudos to the translator, who managed to preserve Zafón’s lovely language) and utterly engrossing. Few writers can trip among the genres so sure-footedly in a single work, but Zafón does it with such grace that his work is irresistible. —Terry Weyna

The Prince Of Mist — (2010) Young adult. Publisher: The novel begins when Max Carver's father — a watchmaker and inventor — decides to move his family to a small town on the Atlantic coast. They move into a house that was built for a prestigious surgeon, Dr Richard Fleischmann and his wife but was abandoned when the couple's son drowned in a tragic accident. Behind the house Max spies an overgrown garden full of statues surrounded by a metal fence topped with a six-pointed star. When he goes to investigate, Max finds that the statues seem to consist of a kind of circus troop. In the centre of the garden is the large statue of a clown set in another six-pointed star. Max has the curious sensation that the statue is beckoning to him. As the family settles in they grow increasingly uneasy: they discover a box of old films belonging to the Fleischmanns; his sister has unsettling dreams and his other sister hears voices whispering to her from an old wardrobe. But Max spends most of his time with his new friend Roland, who takes him diving to the wreck of a boat that sank close to the coast in a terrible storm. Everyone on board perished except for one man — an engineer who built the lighthouse at the end of the beach.During the dive, Max sees something that leaves him cold — on the old mast floats a tattered flag and on it is the symbol of the circle and six-pointed star. As they learn more about the wreck, the chilling story of a legendary figure called Prince of the Mists begins to emerge.

The Midnight Palace — (2011) Young adult. Publisher: In the heart of Calcutta lurks a dark mystery... Set in Calcutta in the 1930s, The Midnight Palace begins on a dark night when an English lieutenant fights to save newborn twins Ben and Sheere from an unthinkable threat. Despite monsoon-force rains and terrible danger lurking around every street corner, the young lieutenant manages to get them to safety, but not without losing his own life... Years later, on the eve of Ben and Sheere's sixteenth birthday, the mysterious threat reenters their lives. This time, it may be impossible to escape. With the help of their brave friends, the twins will have to take a stand against the terror that watches them in the shadows of the night — and face the most frightening creature in the history of the City of Palaces.

The Midnight Palace

Twins are separated at birth, neither one knowing about the other. They are pursued by a villain who seems almost supernatural. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? The Midnight Palace, written by Carlos Ruiz Zafón, who wrote The Angel’s Game, embraces the twins-in-danger story and still delivers surprises.

The Midnight Palace is marketed as young adult. Zafón respects his audience, addressing serious issues in an authentic way. Real world problems are not solved at the end with a homily about everyone getting along. I was a little disappointed in some of the secondary characters, who were not as developed as I would have liked. Overall, though, the vivid visuals, the setting (1932 Calcutta) and the interesting story carried me along. Ben and Sheere, the twins, are sweet, and Ian, who narrates part of the story, emerges as a compelling character. Lucia Graves’s translation is as transparent as crystal, enhancing rather than impeding the story.

Ben, raised in St. Patrick’s orphanage, has drawn together a group of orphan friends who call themselves the Chowbar Club. They meet at a dilapidated house, the Midnight Palace, to tell stories and dream about their futures. Ben has no idea that he has a sister, or that he is being pursued by the murderous madman who killed his parents.

When Ben turns sixteen, he has a strange vision of a train in flames, filled with screaming children. The headmaster of the orphanage is horribly burned in an explosion in his office. He tells Ben to approach Aryami, a mysterious woman who had appeared at the orphanage the previous night with a young woman named Sheere. Aryami acknowledges Ben as her grandson, and tells him that his father and mother were murdered by a madman named Jawahal. Ben and Sheere’s father, Chandra Chatterghee, was an engineering genius who designed the beautiful Jheeter’s Gate train station. His vision was a railroad that would unite the country and provide economic freedom for India. On the railroad’s inaugural run, a train bearing three hundred sixty five orphans burst into flame, killing the orphans and Ben’s father. It destroyed the station. Jawahal claimed credit for the fire, and killed Ben and Sheere’s mother, but a family friend rescued the twin infants and brought them to Aryami. Now, at sixteen, they have again become targets of this crazed killer.

As the Chowbar Club members vow to help Ben and Sheere escape the madman, they begin to investigate the history of the tragic train wreck and the deaths of the twins’ parents. Soon it becomes obvious that the story Aryami told is incomplete, to say the least. Many mysteries are revealed, as danger closes in on Aryami and the twins.

Without being too heavy-handed, Zafón weaves in some Indo-English history and discusses the desire for independence, and the abuses of the English. Equally horrific, though, are the desperate acts people are driven to by their crushing poverty. Jawahal’s mother, for instance, immolated herself as a sacrifice to Kali. Jawahal, a child, escaped into madness, and is no longer merely a man, but something more dangerous.

The book is aimed at young readers, but there are moments of dry wit that will make the adult reader smile:
“We’re getting old, Vendela,” said the headmaster.
“You’re getting old, Thomas,” she corrected him. “I’m maturing.”

“... do you enjoy math, Ben? Math is the faith of those with a brain; that is why it has so few followers.”

Three physical structures stand out in this book. The Midnight Palace is barely described, although what happens within it, the bonding of the young people, is more important than the interior. Chandra Chatterghee’s mysterious house, discovered through a series of puzzles, is an amazing feat of engineering, but the haunted shell of the ruined train station is the most powerful setting in this book.

The careful reader will figure out the secret of Jawahal’s identity before Ben does. Even with that secret revealed, the story of Ben and Sheere’s father and the strange invention called the Firebird is intriguing. The description of the devastated train station, with the puddle of blood that never dries, the ruined train and the Firebird were so haunting they woke me up at night. After I closed the book, the camaraderie of the Chowbar Club stayed with me. Zafón creates a suspenseful tale of secrets, loyalty and love in a strange and beautiful setting. —Marion Deeds