But, whatever it was, it hasn't finished happening, and he finds himself in the heart of it. The more he learns, the more he realizes that something truly monstrous happened back before the war, and the more he wants to know exactly what that was.
He makes unexpected friends and enemies, he falls in love, he travels all over Barcelona, he crosses paths with the local police and even tangles with Franco's dreaded secret police.
He finds some clues, and he meets some resistance. Initially just from curiosity, Daniel tries to investigate the mystery. Both he and his works appear to have vanished with hardly a trace. He loves it so much, he wants to find more books by the same author, but despite the book being relatively-recently published, he has trouble finding out anything about it or its author. Recommended for public libraries and bookstores.Leda Schiavo, Univ.In post-WWII Spain, during the time of Franco, Daniel Sempre, the young son of a bookstore owner, comes across a captivating novel titled "The Shadow of the Wind" ( La sombra del viento ) by a Julian Carax. Although Riuz Zafon uses some complex metaphors to imitate Carax's melodramatic style, his language is mostly clear and accessible to all readers. Some scenes in this thriller also refer to Borges's exploration of libraries, the labyrinth structure, and Arturo P rez-Reverte's study of hypertextuality in works like El club Dumas (The Dumas Club, Suma de Letras, 2000). Ruiz Zafon explores the world of antique books, the city of Barcelona, and the animosity inherited from the Spanish Civil War. Carax's and Ruiz Zafon's novels blend throughout the story, sometimes misleading the reader but ending in masterfully executed pages. The narration unfolds through an interesting, yet overextended, interplay of overlapping characters and stories. For more than a decade, he follows the writer's ghost through a labyrinth of love, sex, violence, friendship, and betrayal. When Daniel visits a mysterious and secret Library of Forgotten Books in 1940s Barcelona and finds Carax's novel The Shadow of the Wind, he becomes obsessed with Carax. This thriller follows the mysterious disappearance of an author of melodramas, Juli n Carax, and how his book influences the 10-year-old Daniel Sempere. A Barcelona-born novelist based in Los Angeles, Ruiz Zafon was a finalist for the Spanish Fernando Lara de Novela award with this fifth novel.
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