The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

 

Every book, every volume you see here, has a soul. The soul of the person who wrote it and of those who read it and lived and dreamed with it. Every time a book changes hands, every time someone runs his eyes down its pages, its spirit grows and strengthens.

Daniel's book seller father takes him to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, a library that houses banned and rare books in Francoist Spain. There, he discovers a novel by a mysterious author called Julian Carax, titled The Shadow of the Wind. He loves the book and also finds out that its enigmatic writer is missing, and someone has taken up the mission to burn all his books. When he realises that the copy with him is one of the few surviving, Daniel is fixated on uncovering the mystery, embarking on a dangerous journey to uncover a tragic story of passionate romance, hidden family secrets, treacherous betrayals, and brutal violence.

The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón is a historical mystery with gothic undertones. The novel, originally written in Spanish in 2001, turned out to be a tremendous success all over the world. It is even touted as the most successful Spanish novel after Don Quixote. Zafón went on to write a few more novels that are set in the same universe, which I have yet to read. The writer employs a story-inside-story kind of narration to tell a tale of intrigue.

The novel has an embedded narrative, in which the main narrator takes a break and allows other characters to tell aspects of the story that only they are aware of. This is the facet of the novel that gives it additional layers and makes it more absorbing. The main branch of the narrative features Daniel recounting his experience in the first person. He is in search of the truth behind Julian Carax, all the while struggling with his own desires. He encounters several complex characters on his way, and it is through their accounts that the reader finds the keys to uncovering the mystery of Julian Carax and his tragedy. We also find quaint similarities in the way the stories of Carax and Daniel develop, signalling a circular narrative that the author masterfully delivers on the final page of the novel.

Along with narrating a striking tale of mystery, the writer ensures that he populates The Shadow of the Wind with brilliant characters. In a narrative that spans decades, we find that all the characters move and transform organically with the plot. Zafón treats his characters with much love and empathy, allows them to breathe and grow inside his plot, and simultaneously manages to keep them from affecting the overarching structure of the novel.

The chapters of the book very precisely label the time period in which the incidents take place and provide a temporal anchor for the novel. It helps to give a historic context and offers a perspective on the motives and actions of certain characters that may look rash and out of place at any other time. Breakage and reformation of social structure and class, as well as tumultuous political and economic situations, work as catalysts to drive the plot.

The Shadow of the Wind reminded me of several other novels, especially the ones by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The sprawling narrative, despondent humour, and a self-doubting protagonist on a journey towards self-realisation evoke novels like Life in the Time of Cholera and One Hundred Years of Solitude. Some other novels that came to mind while reading this book were Life is Elsewhere by Milan Kundera, The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Hugo, and Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco. I am not implying that any portion of The Shadow of the Wind is similar to any of these books, but that it possesses the power to invoke in its reader such strange feelings and emotions that cannot be named while enjoying it.