The good news – for those of you who loved “The Shadow of the Wind” – is that Carlos Ruiz Zafon’s second novel, number two in a tetralogy, is scheduled for release in Spain on April 17.
And those of you who don’t like Ruiz Zafón’s baroque style had better avoid this novel for his intent is to continue themes and images born in “The Shadow of the Wind.”
“The Game of the Angel” is the second in a cycle of four books planned in a gothic Barcelona quartet, a sort of narrative kaleidoscope of Victorian sagas, intrigue, romance, comedy, mystery and old fashioned good storytelling.
Ruiz Zafon was born in Barcelona, Spain, in 1964. He was raised in that city, which he used as the setting for “The Shadow of the Wind.”
The close proximity of his parents’ house to Gaudí’s Sagrada Familia Cathedral and the years he spent at the Gothic Jesuit school of Sarría made a lasting impression on his imagination.
Even as a 10 year-old, he wrote Gothic tales that kept his schoolmates up all night – a talent which would later help him to achieve great success.
After his student days, he worked in advertising for a few years. He also was a musician and wrote advertising jingles for TV. He finally gave it up in 1992 so that he could thoroughly devote himself to literature.
He moved to the United States when he was 30. After 11 years in Los Angeles, where he worked from time to time as a screenwriter, he returned to Barcelona in 2006 with his wife. Today, he is a full-time writer living again in Barcelona.
He wrote four novels for young adults including “The Prince of Mist,” 1993, for which he won the Edebé literary prize before “The Shadow of the Wind” was published in 2001.
“The Shadow of the Wind” has been published in more than 30 languages in more than 40 countries. It was a best seller both in Spain and in Germany. His book has sold more copies than any other Spanish novel to date including the classic “Don Quixote.”
“The Shadow of the Wind,” was published in Spain in 2001 and sold so well that the Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports provided financial support to enable Lucia Graves, daughter of poet Robert Graves, to translate it into English.
Later, its popularity in the United Kingdom was significantly boosted by being selected for Channel 4 TV book club in 2005.
Ruiz Zafon describes, in colorful prose, his rise from the advertising world to the world of literature:
“In my tender youth I worked as a musician (composer, arranger and keyboard player/synthesizer programmer, and record producer) and I’ve also labored for seven long years in the advertising jungle as a cynical mercenary, first as a copywriter, then a creative director (whatever that means) and also producing/directing TV commercials and polluting the world with artifacts glorifying Visa, Audi, Sony, Volkswagen, American Express, and many other evil entities.
"In 1992, when the lease on my soul was about to expire, I quit to become what I always wanted to do, be a full-time writer. Since then, I’ve published five novels and also have worked occasionally as a screenwriter.”
The first young adult novel he published, in 1993, earned a literary prize so he must have made the right career decision. Since that fortuitous beginning, he has published three more young-adult novels, “The Palace at Midnight” (1994), “The Lights of September” (1995) and “Marina” (1999).
Not everyone adores “The Shadow of the Wind.” The San Francisco Chronicle gave it a D and many critics complain that it is basically an over-heated Victorian potboiler. Nonetheless, it has sold millions of copies worldwide.
At the Frankfurt Book Fair in October 2003, where the book was already the talk of the town, Ruiz-Zafon talked about his craft.
“ I've been writing novels for ten years which were pretty successful in the young adult field, but for this one I wanted to create something very special, something that was all I ever wanted in a book.
“ So what I did was take what for me is very important, which is take all the great ambition in all those nineteenth-century novels, but try to reconstruct those big novels - the Tolstoy, the Dickens, the Wilkie Collins - but try to reconstruct all of that with all the narrative elements that the twentieth century has given us, from the grammar of cinema, from multimedia, from general fiction, from everything that is out there, to create a much more intense reading experience for the readers.
“That was the idea, and that was the experiment to create with The Shadow in the Wind. So, in a way, it is like a novel of novels; it is a story that is made of many stories; it's a story that combines humor, it combines mystery, it combines a love story, it combines historical fiction - it combines many different genres, to great a new one, a new genre, a hybrid that does all those things as well.
“I think everything converged in The Shadow of the Wind, which in a way is a first novel, even though it's a fifth.
Everything in The Shadow of the Wind comes from within me and from my own experiences, but also from the greater world of literature, from fiction, from the great novels, the great stories, and all of these elements are, because in a way the novel is a love letter to reading, to the great novels, to the great stories, and all of that is combined, because I'm not only a writer - I'm a reader. So I write the books I want to read.”
The author says his hometown of Barcelona is more than a place in his books – it’s a character: “Barcelona is a complex virtual world of Dickensian lights and shadows, beautiful and mysterious. I wanted to bring its history, its soul, alive in this story in a very cinematic way.”
Finally, imagine how the librarians at Lake Oswego, Oregon, felt last year when they received several letters from Ruiz Zafon after they chose “The Shadow of the Wind” for a Lake Oswego Reads program. Here’s what he wrote to them:
"Greetings from Barcelona.
“I am overwhelmed by all the wonderful events you have organized around Shadow of the Wind, celebrating culture, books and the joy of reading. It is truly an honor that you have chosen one of my novels as the stepping stone of this great project and I will always count myself the lucky bastard for having been along for the ride.
“As I mentioned months ago, I would have loved to be able to come to Lake Oswego and see all of this first hand. Unfortunately, the deadline for my next book is circling me like a hungry great white shark and I´ve been trapped like the count of Montecristo trying to tame the new beastie into shape.
“I have fond memories of the state of Oregon and the Portland area from the time I used to live in California, and more than once I´ve found myself wandering along the corridors of Powell´s City of Books thinking only a community of great people can support and make possible such a fantastic place.
“I would like to thank all of you who made possible this fantastic experience, and also to all of those who took a chance and plunged into the shadowy world of Carax, Fermin and Daniel and the entire city of Lake Oswego.
“ I´m pretty sure that in the near future I will spend again a lot of time back in America, which was my home for 12 years and where I wrote ‘The Shadow of the Wind,’ which I always call a "west coast novel", and I mean it.
“I sincerely hope to be able to once again drive all the way to the great city where books are not forgotten, where people read, dance and celebrate life in the streets because they know that to read is to live more, and to live better. And in case you enjoyed the novel, rest assured the adventures of the gothic and mysterious Barcelona of the Cemetery of Forgotten Books have just begun. There´s more on the way, and I sincerely hope we'll meet again between the pages.
Your friend, Carlos Ruiz Zafon.”
-- Reach Elisabeth Sherwin at gizmo@dcn.org and watch for more writings to be featured biweekly to monthly at this web site.
For More Information, Visit These Links:
Carlos Ruiz Zafon at Wikipedia
The Angel's Game at Wikipedia
The Shadow of the Wind at Wikipedia
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