Reading in the garden : Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind.

Carlos Ruiz Zafón is a Catalan, Spanish writer who since 1993 lives in California. He is a very well known writer around the world, and one of his most successful novels, The Shadow of the Wind, has been translated into many languages; at the beginnig it was slow and difficult to introduce the novel in Spain but it has become a worldwide  bestseller,  and the author has sold more than 10 million copies.

The Shadow of the Wind set in Barcelona, in the first half of 20th century, and it is most all a beautiful and historical tragedy of  love story through time.

A story about the secrets of the heart, the magic of  books and the dark soul of the city in hard times.
 It's also a wonderfully writen book.
The author reveals plots and intrigues.
 I read the English version.

Sometimes when I walk around the old quarter and the Gothic quarter of Barcelona, and I look at the old bookstores, I think about the cemetery of the lost books, and about the characters of this gothic novel such as Daniel Sempere, Julián Carax, Gustavo Barceló...and Lain Coubert, the devil, who come out  from  his fiction world and he stalked Daniel in the real world.

I think about the dark soul of the city which is preserved in  memory, in the bottom of the hearts and it exists. Fortunately the wind sometimes hits hard the city and a new and beautiful dawn arrives, then the dark soul seems to vanish and it just stays in the shadow.