Oh my goodness, I love this book. If anyone is ever in the market for Spanish fiction that’s probably not in your curriculum, La Sombra Del Viento (The Shadow of the Wind) is a good choice. It’s the first book in the El cementerio de los libros olvidados (Cemetery of Forgotten Books) series by Carlos Ruiz Zafón and it is a trip!
It’s a period drama/mystery/bildungsroman about a boy, Daniel, who works in a bookstore with his father who takes him to the Cemetery of Forgotten books (a special, secret library) where he chooses a book to take home and becomes obsesses with its mysterious author, Julián Carax. Daniel tries to uncover the mysteries surrounding Julián’s past, which includes forbidden love, a love triangle, a family secret, and murder.
I first came across this book in high school while looking for something to write my Extended Essay about. I was in the IB program and our English literature teacher was already a chosen advisor, so I switched gears to write about Spanish literature. It was tricky reading it at first, so I bought both the Spanish and English versions.
This book is full of so many great quotes:
“This is a place of mystery, Daniel, a sanctuary. Every book, every volume you see here, has a soul. The soul of the person who wrote it and of those who read it and lived and dreamed with it. Every time a book changes hands, every time someone runs his eyes down its pages, its spirit grows and strengthens...”
“The female heart is a labyrinth of subtleties, too challenging for the uncouth mind of the male racketeer. If you really want to possess a woman, you must think like her, and the first thing to do is to win over her soul.”
“There are worse prisons than words, Daniel.”
“He would have liked to know that somebody wanted to keep him alive, that someone remembered him. He used to say that we exist as long as somebody remembers us.”
It’s a story of love, of hatred, and of the dreams that live in the shadow of the wind.”
Zafon, Carlos Ruiz. The Shadow of the Wind (The Cemetery of Forgotten Books 1) . Penguin Publishing Group.
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