The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón review - a triumph of imagination

One man’s compulsion to find the truth leads to devilish encounters

Robert Colvile

Sunday 6 June 2014

B

uried in the back streets of Barcelona lies the Cemetery of Lost Books - a mausoleum for out-of-print works, salvaged by the bibliophiles of the city. There, 10-year-old Daniel Sempere discovers a book called The Shadow of the Wind, by Julián Carax, which captures his young imagination.

But when he investigates this unknown author, he finds out that his is the last surviving copy, as a mysterious figure called Laín Coubert has dedicated himself to eradicating Carax’s work completely. But in Carax’s book, Laín Coubert is the name of the Devil.

Over the next decade (no hurried thriller this), Daniel begins to investigate Carax’s life, piecing together the secrets and tragedies that shadowed the author’s life and work. In doing so, he stirs up vendettas and memories that threaten his own safety, as well as finding unnerving correspondences between the author’s life and his own. Compelled to learn more, Daniel incurs the wrath of more tangible enemies than the shadowy Coubert - most alarmingly, a sadistic policeman with secrets of his own.

Daniel is a believably awkward teenager - compassionate (he rescues a former prisoner, Fermín Romero de Torres, from life on the streets), but naive and romantically inept. Having lost his mother as a child, he admits that he cannot even remember what she looked like and is afraid of her photograph for fear he would see a stranger. Women are hence unknowable, frightening creatures, their hearts a ‘labyrinth of subtleties’ - yet Daniel, like Julián, risks life and limb for the sake of women above his station.