"Soon afterward, like figures made of steam, father and son disappear into
the crowd of the Ramblas, their steps lost forever in the shadow of the wind."
Carlos Ruiz Zafon is the kind of author that I probably never would have picked up if someone hadn't recommended him. But I ended up reading his Shadow of the Wind and INHALING it. The tragic story of a doomed couple interspaced with a tale of growing into adulthood by the boy who initially starts the research is so well done, and the terrible ending still gives me chills today. It's one of those things you just can't read too many times, or you might even go a little bit mad yourself ...
All in all, however, when the wind picks up to blow through the streets of old Barcelona, this is the book to read.
Barcelona, 1945. Just after the war, a great world city lies in shadow, nursing its wounds, and a boy named Daniel awakes on his eleventh birthday to find that he can no longer remember his mother’s face. To console his only child, Daniel’s widowed father, an antiquarian book dealer, initiates him into the secret of the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, a library tended by Barcelona’s guild of rare-book dealers as a repository for books forgotten by the world, waiting for someone who will care about them again. And before Daniel knows it his seemingly innocent quest has opened a door into one of Barcelona’s darkest secrets, an epic story of murder, magic, madness and doomed love ...
(from Goodreads)
xx
*image not mine
