[Nesacat]

Shadow Of The Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon.

The narrator, Daniel, is the son of a Barcelona bookseller, and the novel opens with a marvelous invention: the Cemetery of Forgotten Books. It is this world that Daniel is initiated into in 1945, when he is just ten years old:

In this place, books no longer remembered by anyone, books that are lost in time, live forever, waiting for the day when they will reach a new reader's hands.

It's a fantastic place, and as Daniel's father explains to his son:

"According to tradition, the first time someone visits this place, he must choose a book, whichever he wants, and adopt it, making sure that it will never disappear, that it will always stay alive."

Daniel makes his choice, a book called The Shadow of the Wind by a Julian Carax. As it turns out, this is a special and extremely rare book. As soon as it becomes known that Daniel has a copy he gets several very generous offers for it -- but he knows his duty to the book. But, as someone has been going around for years collecting and destroying all copies of all of Carax's works, being guardian of the book isn't entirely without danger.

Daniel slowly learns the story of the author, who wrote and published several other works in the 1920s and 30s that were published in Paris and then in Barcelona. He: "lead a ghostly existence between his job as a pianist in a variety club and his disastrous career as a remarkably unsuccessful novelist."

Most traces of his life seem to have disappeared, but over the course of the novel Daniel manages to uncover quite a bit, learning bits and pieces from some of those who knew him. But for decades the shadowy figure calling himself Lain Coubert - a figure in Carax's The Shadow of the Wind (the devil, in fact) - has been trying to eradicate the remaining traces, and especially the books that were left behind. And Coubert isn't the only sinister figure: there's also - or is it the same person ? - the novel's arch-villain, an opportunistic sadist who by the early 1950s had risen to chief inspector of the Barcelona Crime Squad, Francisco Javier Fumero, who seems unnaturally obsessed by Carax.

Daniel only slowly comes to learn the whole story - and only eventually becomes drawn into it completely. Along the way, among other things, he falls in love with a blind woman, Clara (who had also once been captivated by Carax's writing) and rescues another victim of Fumero's, Fermin Romero de Torres, who comes to work in the family bookshop -- and helps Daniel in his quest.

Daniel does get drawn into the Carax story, which is more mysterious than he could have imagined. The pieces fall into place - childhood friendships and humiliations, disappointed and discouraged love, deepest-rooted and long-lingering hatred and anger -, and conflict and confrontation are unavoidable. Several of the characters are unwilling to leave the past dead and buried, and Daniel finds himself in the middle of it all.

It's a book full of passion and revenge, unrequited love, grave disappointments, and redemption. Daniel isn't particularly heroic, but he's a sympathetic central figure, not too ambitious and very human in his failings. Fermin is a great and resourceful sidekick, and many of the other characters are well-drawn too.

At the end the book is almost an ode to books and the art of reading. And all of us who love books will in some way be able to find ourselves a part of this tale.