The Shadow Of The Wind

by Zafon, Carlos Ruiz; Graves, Lucia (translation)

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Description

Penguin USA, 2005. Near-fine copy. NO remainder marks or price clippings - Tight spine - Bright pages. NO writing, marks or tears inside book. 487 pages. - In the postwar calm of 1945 Barcelona, ten-year-old Daniel Sempere awakes from a nightmare and, to his horror, realizes that he can no longer remember the face of his deceased mother. In an effort to divert his son's attention from this sharply felt fear and loss, his father, a rare-book dealer, first swears Daniel to secrecy, then takes him to a clandestine library where Daniel is allowed to select a single book. Entranced, Daniel picks a novel, The Shadow of the Wind, written by the enigmatic Julián Carax, who is rumored to have fled Spain under murky circumstances, and later died. As Daniel begins to search for other works by his favorite new author, he discovers that they have all been destroyed -- torched by a mysterious stranger obsessed with obliterating Carax's literary legacy from the face of the earth. Though Daniel's copy of Carax's novel is the last in existence, he's unwilling to part with it at any price and dedicates himself to revealing the truth about Carax. Aided in his quest by the good-humored Fermín Romero de Torres, a former beggar whose "difficult life-lessons" enable him to keep a step ahead of trouble, Daniel begins to uncover a tale of murder, madness, and secrets that might best be forgotten. And as he wends his way through Barcelona society, both high and low, he comes to realize that his own part in The Shadow of the Wind is more than that of a mere reader. . Trade Paperback. Near-Fine. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall.

Book summary

This best-selling Spanish novel (translated into English by Lucia Graves) begins with a young boy named Daniel, who discovers a strange, forgotten novel in a bookstore: it's called THE SHADOW OF THE WIND, and the rumor is that its author is being plagued by a man who is trying to track down copies of the book so he can destroy them. As the story moves out of the 1940s and Daniel grows up, he becomes consumed with investigating this bizarre story and the life of the book's author, and the search for the truth takes him not only into the lives of others but deeply into his own background.