The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

This is one of those cases when the book makes its long journey to finally make you grab it and hardly put it down till the last page is read and no continuation is found or ever known to exist. The first time I heard about this book was during my stay in beautiful Barcelona (the events of the book take place in the same very city – coincidence №1). I was sitting on the bench reading the Russian translation of Paulo Coelho’s “The Zahir”. A woman sat down next to me, opened her book and started reading as well. Out of sheer curiosity that always pushes me to peep at what people are reading in the underground or airports I looked at her book and saw she was reading just the same book but in Spanish (coincidence №2). We talked like those twins in Indian movies that had been separated long time before and only found each other years later with the help of the identical mole somewhere on the right hip. The woman’s name was Maria. It was one of those meetings so unforgettable and sweet when there was no necessity to get in contact ever again not to break the spell. That was the moment I first heard about “La Sombra del Viento”. Maria carefully wrote the name of the book on a strangely formed piece of paper and I carefully lost it somewhere between Zurich and Cologne. In 2 months or so a friend of mine told me he had bought a very interesting book and it made him stay sleepless. I am not sure that there was any necessity to ask him the name of the book. Surely it was “The Shadow of the Wind” (coincidence №3). How many more coincidences did I need? Zero. I dived into it. I ate it. I drank it. I definitely took joy in it.

Although I speak some Spanish and even borrowed the original version from the library, my impatience won and I read it in English only because it was faster (the translation was so good and the language so rich that for the first time in my life I looked up the name of the translator and wondered if the person was bilingual).
The main character of the book is Daniel Sempere. After being taken by his father to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books and allowed to pick up only one book from the shelf, he chose “The Shadow of the Wind” by Julián Carax. Since that moment his adventures would start. He would learn to distinguish between real and false, he would lose and find more often quite not the same that had been lost, he would meet new friends, he would find love, he would learn compassion, he would become adult and mature. While reading you will quite definitely find yourself covered with cold sweat getting quite suspicious about every squeak of every door in the house. This is a book about books, it gives you that strange feeling like watching a film where somebody is watching a film, although in this case the strangeness is likely to appear as an advantage.