The Shadow of the Wind is a Spanish language book that was published in 2001 that became a worldwide hit after its translation into English by Lucia Graves in 2004. Graves is one of the most renowned translators of Spanish into English in the literary community, and her pedigree is impressive; she is the daughter of Robert Graves and his second wife, Beryl Pritchard.
Carlos Ruiz Zafon's novel centers around a young boy called Daniel, just after the Spanish Civil War. Daniel's father takes him to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, tome after ancient tome preserved by a select few people initiated into the art of bookbinding. Every initiate is allowed to take one book that they must vow to protect with their life, for all of their life. Daniel selects a book called The Shadow of the Wind.
The story then follows Daniel's search to find other works by the author of the book he has selected, but he cannot find any. All he can find are stories and urban myths that a man whose name is the same as one of The Shadow of the Wind's main characters, and who is actually the devil has been seeking for the same books as Daniel, because he wants to set fire to them all.
Much like Jostein Gaarder's "Sophie's World", the book is a story within a story. Daniel begins tracing the ancestry of his new found favorite author, but this leads him down a dark and sinister path where he encounters characters who have evil in their hearts.
The novel is not entirely sinister; there is also romance, centering around both Daniel, and the author for whom he is seeking. By the story's end, Daniel is married with a child of his own, whom he takes to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, where he selects the book of his own choosing.
The book received glowing international acclaim, although some book reviewers felt it to be a little too generically gruesome when it came to describing a typically gothic murder. Ruiz Zafon shared with critics that his influence when writing any of his novels has been film noir, which has led him to create strange and cinematic worlds on paper, imagining them to be movies on a big screen rather than books at all.
