The Shadow of the Wind (The Cemetery of Forgotten Book 1) by Carlos Ruiz Zafon (EPUB)

Description

The New York Times bestseller“The Shadow of the Wind is ultimately a love letter to literature, intended for readers as passionate about storytelling as its young hero.” —Entertainment Weekly (Editor’s Choice)“One gorgeous read.” —Stephen KingBarcelona, 1945: A city slowly heals in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, and Daniel, an antiquarian book dealer’s son who mourns the loss of his mother, finds solace in a mysterious book entitled The Shadow of the Wind, by one Julián Carax. But when he sets out to find the author’s other works, he makes a shocking discovery: someone has been systematically destroying every copy of every book Carax has written. In fact, Daniel may have the last of Carax’s books in existence. Soon Daniel’s seemingly innocent quest opens a door into one of Barcelona’s darkest secrets–an epic story of murder, madness, and doomed love.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐Since I’ve only just received this book, which is in REALLY good condition, I can only comment on the book itself. I would say this is maybe not new, but it is in excellent condition as to be near new. It got to me fairly quickly. I am very pleased overall with the book and the seller.

⭐I was intrigued from the start. I wanted to read this book for my first ever book club. The book wasn’t the best I had ever read, but I couldn’t walk away. At times I was confused. It might have just been me because I could only read about 15 minutes at a time. I liked the book and would read another by Mr. Carlos Ruiz Zafon. I do recommend this book and think it would be a real treat for someone who can sit and read it in 3 to 4 sittings.

⭐Great writing.

⭐”Memories are worse than bullets” from page 427 of “The Shadow of the Wind” by Carlos Ruiz Zafon captures the coloring of this story – imbued with the memories of the key players. The tale is elegantly written (though a bit too long), beautifully translated (with a few glaring blunders), and totally mesmerizing. It was hard to put down and easy to pick up again. As to the funniest translation mistake, see Page 343, “…that the dice had been cast,” a whopping misunderstanding of the phrase “the die has been cast.”The setting is 1940s and 1950s Barcelona (with side trips to Paris). The author has captured the feel of post civil-war, post world war II Spain perfectly. And, as a bonus, there is a tour map with pictures and guiding narrative at the end of the book for those who want to trace the steps of the book’s characters as they lived in this story.Some of the over-intellectualizing critics here (see the very few negative reviews) kind of miss the point. This is a great story, written by a very talented story-teller, filled with wonderfully developed and interesting characters. Is it literature? Is War and Peace literature? Is Madame Bovary? Is anything written by ANY modern author literature? We all know Dan Brown does not write literature – he writes outlines for screen plays, for instance. I actually don’t care. I loved this story and the way it was written.There are innumerable lines to underline and ponder. “Telling the truth should be kept as a last resort, Daniel, even more so to a nun,” spoken on Page 253 by my favorite character in the book, the hilarious Fermin Romero de Torres. Or, “The most efficient way of rendering the poor harmless is to teach them to imitate the rich,” page 198. And, “…what destiny does not do is home visits. You have to go for it,” page 225.Most of the negative reviews omit to say that this book is hilarious, time and time again. It is also sad, filled with pathos and violent in places. One sees both the good and terrible side of men and women.The story bogs down somewhat during the long narrative by Nuria Monfort, where we learn important details of the various mysteries and intrigues central to the unraveling of the story. At times here and elsewhere in the book the writing suffers from what I would call TMI (too much information), when less would be better. The story is complicated as are the players, but all to the better. The reader has to “work” a little bit to catch on to the threads of the story, but in the last analysis the mystery is not so hard to solve. Any astute reader can be well ahead of the story teller here, but that does not ruin anything.I do not really know what a gothic novel is, but apparently this is a modern version of “romance mixed with horror.” The romance part vastly overshadows the horror part in this story. But the horror is quite graphic and sufficient. The evil character is indeed evil. It’s hard to decide who the central character is” Daniel or Julian, as their lives and personalities become intertwined.My major criticism focuses on my confusion about the “voice” of the story. Who really is the narrator? Ostensibly it is Daniel, but……………there are many pages where other voices take center stage. At times I had to read 3 or 4 pages of these other “voices” before I was sure about exactly who was “talking.” Carlos Ruiz Zafon does not have as big a problem as Arturo Perez-Reverte about “voice of the story,” but Zafon confused me at times.There really is no denouement. Like all good, real stories, all of the players and themes simply merge together at the end, and the epilogues finish off any further questions a reader might have. I found the ending very satisfying.”The Shadow of the Wind” is an enormously pleasurable read. If there were “in between” categories, I would give it a 4.6, but I’ll round up the rating to a 5. And happy to do so.

⭐I have always believed that a book finds you, if it wants you to read it. I think that happens to most of us – to the reader who waits patiently for the book to come along and take him or her on a ride that cannot be forgotten. Two people and very different people at that told me to read, “The Shadow of the Wind”. I had the book in my possession, however had not read it till then. I always wanted to, but did not. I guess my time had to come on its own. I had to wait for the book and it has been a wait worth it like no other.”The Shadow of the Wind” by Carlos Ruiz Zafon is everything you expect from a well-written book. The plot makes you turn the pages. The sentences and language make you fall in love with the writer’s thought process. The characters make you connect with them at all levels of human emotions and more than anything else, this book is about love for literature and reading, and not letting the written word die.The book is about the search of a boy, Daniel Sempere for the truth about the fate of Julian Carax, the author of a mystery novel (also named The Shadow of the Wind). Daniel adopts the book when his father, a bibliophile and a bookseller takes him to the metaphorical (or real) Cemetery of Forgotten Books and it is there that he owns the book and gets embroiled in its author’s life. He sets out to search for more books written by him and to know what happened to him. In all of this, he learns of someone who is named after one of Carax’s characters and has set out to burn every single copy of Carax’s books and will not stop at anything. Daniel gets involved with him as well and the story thickens. It is one tale after another, intertwined and encompassing the length and breadth of great storytelling, till the reader with bated breath reaches the end of the book. The book is about Barcelona’s deepest and darkest secret that is about to be revealed, which of course the reader has to discover for himself or herself.Zafon’s characters are haunting and well thought after. He is the master of mood setting. Every page speaks of scenes with mists, clouds, evenings, darkness, the pale lamplight, thunder, rain and Zafon brilliantly so makes the reader a part of his atmosphere and setting, so much so that I actually thought I was living all of it in Barcelona (where the story is set). Zafon speaks of books like living beings, which I also think they are and he makes them real for the readers in his book. To a very large extent, the book is extraordinary because of the way the author is treating every word – with great caution and love. When this happens in a book, it is but natural that the reader will also read every word with great love and joy.With reference to the setting, which is Barcelona before the Spanish Civil War, Zafon talks of politics and life with great passion and almost wants the reader to know how important the setting is to the story. Books about books have always fascinated me and this was also one of those reads. It is very difficult to classify “The Shadow of the Wind” in one genre and yet to a large extent I think the book belongs to Literary Fiction as it covers almost every aspect of life and living. There is courage, intrigue, love, fairy tale quality, Goth, redemption, politics, love, hate, passion and almost every other emotion and characteristic that you can think of in the book. The quality of writing, the old school setting, the power of storytelling, the characters and the plot, all come together and speak of books and reading and the love for them. I could go on and on about this book and the writing, but you know what I mean when I say: Read this book soon or let it find you the way it found me.

⭐‘What’s wrong with him?’‘I could tell you it’s his heart, but what is really killing him is loneliness. Memories are worse than bullets.’ The Shadow of the Wind written by Carlos Ruiz Zafon and translated by Lucia Graves, was an absolutely beautiful book to read and savour. I am in such awe of the flowing, vivid and rich details in this novel, and I must applaud Lucia Graves for her skill in her translation. The Shadow of the Wind is hard to define to one specific genre; although it is classed as historical fiction I personally felt that it was more of a bildungsroman, with a crime thriller twist to it. The story follows Daniel Sempere from a young boy, as he first enters the Cemetery of Forgotten Books and chances upon a novel written by Julien Carax. He then embarks upon a journey throughout the years to uncover the truth about the author. Through this journey, we watch Daniel and those closest to him experience loneliness, forbidden love, prejudice, and lost friendships. Barcelona is shown to be a perfect gothic backdrop to this, and I loved visualising all the descriptions. Whilst Daniel was my favourite character, it was Fermin Romero de Torres who I found the most entertaining, as his humour really cut through the more somber chapters. He was always so eccentric and crude but he surely had a heart of gold and was just loveable.Fumero the main villain of the book, was one to really despise. He was an awful and malicious character, whom I loved to hate! I did find that in the middle of the book the story did start to drag a bit, the pace slowed down a bit too much for my liking. However, I didn’t mind too much as I think my favourite aspect of this book was the rich writing that was full of similes and metaphors, which were incredibly perfect. I seriously could have included so many quotes in this review. There were so many descriptions about books and the readers enjoyment of them. This is definitely a book for all book lovers

⭐Within the first 6 pages of this book, I fell in love. Like this doesn’t usually happen to me, I don’t usually fall in love with a book or writer that quick, it usually takes a lot longer than it did. Within 6 pages I had fallen madly in love with this, I think it was definitely the writing, something about it, I don’t think I can explain the feeling with this book. I wanted to devour it all at once and then I also wanted to save it. I did manage to drag out the reading of this book, a little. But honestly the whole writing it was perfect, I think I can only describe it like that. As you can tell I’m totally fangirling over this, I had to take a few hours break so I could like gather thoughts, a few hours later I’m still fangirling. It was so perfect. I just wanted to make a note about Carlos Ruiz Zafon’s writing, I am in love.The book is set in parts as well as chapters, the parts give you an idea of the date that that part of the story is set in as it does span over a few years from Daniel being a child to going into teenage adult times. It also covers the time span of Julián and his story, so it does make it clear and there are ways you know when certain things happen for example when a character tells a story you know it is a story. As I said there is little signs of changes of time and topic or plot within the story. So it makes it easier to recognise.As the blurb said it follows Daniel as he tries to discover the story of the author who wrote The Shadow of The Wind by Julián Carax. The story was complex, but not confusing, everything was explained and worked out through the story. The plot was so amazing and it draws you in, and you just want to turn the page over and over and before you know it you have finished the book. I have loads of things I want to say about this book but I also don’t want to put spoilers in, so I may have to do a video review and fangirl the heck out of this book.Daniel, I immediately connected with his character especially his love for that book because I think we all have that love for a certain book so I definitely got where he was coming from with that. He was such a charming character and it was very interesting watching him grow up from a child to a teen slowly starting adulthood. His interaction with different characters completely showed what kind of person he was. Like when he goes to see Cara (Who is blind) sits and reads with her and he just does nice stuff. Always seems to get punched for it like.Julián, he is I would say the other main character in this story and he is such an enigma and he is so fascinating and I love it. I think along with Daniel I fell in love with the man from him. Like he was so amazing and there is so much I want to say because I don’t want to spoil it. (So that’s all I can say about him because spoiler)I loved all the characters in this book and I thought that they all had a nice part in the book and I liked them all well except the certain person who did the certain thing to a certain person. (See the spoiler problem?)I can’t really say anything else about this book I may have to do a spoiler review on youtube. Would you all like that? Would you like to hear more about my thoughts on this with spoilers? Let me know!

⭐What a trudge this read has been and what a read of contradictions. On the one hand this plot had so much potential and it regularly ignited my interest, but each time it did, it was followed by long chapters of dull description of something. The characters of Daniel, his father, Fermin and Julian were interesting but I can’t say that I liked any of them but Daniel. I don’t really get why Daniel pursued the intrigue for as long as he did, why he became obsessed by Julian Carux.I hated how all the women were written in this book. They were all unfortunate creatures of some description, lacking in depth of character. This was in complete opposite to the depth of character most of the men had. Hmmm. Too much focus on voluptuous breasts…if this was a romance or whatever, this might have been in context, but it wasn’t here.As if the pacing wasn’t difficult enough, the way that the reveals came, in a letter (all tell and no whow). In the kindle edition, this was formatted as a book within a book…Chapter 1 this drove me crazy. The twists were somewhat clever but I’d lost my give a damn about 40% prior, so it didn’t have the same shine.Lots of people love this book, I don’t know why it missed the spot but in my opinion it could have been shorter with the bore edited out. I have no compunction to continue with the series and if I never hear of Lain Courbert again, it will be too soon. I am reassured that most of my book club also struggled with this one, so it’s not just me.

⭐I came across this book by chance in a charity shop and the premise of a library of forgotten books is what prompted me to read it. I’m so glad I did – it’s a book unlike anything I’ve ever read before. The author’s evocative descriptions bring the images alive in my mind and the story just absorbed me from the start. I couldn’t read it fast enough. Have now also read the two sequels and am really looking forward to the last book “The Laberynth of the Spirits”!

⭐This book has definitely earned its place as a literary classic.Gothic, beautifully written, filled with mystery, intrigue and characters that you simply can’t put down.This is a detective story that you never know who is actually being hunted ‘The Devil’ or the author. A young boy who is obsessed with a book and therefore a story, a history that is unsolved and he must be the one to unravel it. Set on the streets of Barcelona against backdrop filled with corruption and dark alleys this book is one that every fan of Gothic literature must read and trust me, you’ll go back for more and more.

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