The Shadow of the Wind
The Shadow of the Wind (Spanish: La sombra del viento) is a 2001 novel by the Spanish writer Carlos Ruiz Zafón and a worldwide bestseller. The book was translated into English in 2004 by Lucia Graves and sold over a million copies in the UK after already achieving success on mainland Europe, topping the Spanish bestseller lists for weeks. It was published in the United States by Penguin Books and in Great Britain by Weidenfeld & Nicolson and Orion Books. It is believed to have sold 15 million copies worldwide,[1] making it one of the best-selling books of all time.
Ruiz Zafón’s follow-up, The Angel’s Game, is a prequel to The Shadow of the Wind. His third in the series, The Prisoner of Heaven, is the sequel to The Shadow of the Wind.
The novel is actually a story within a story.[2] In the story-world “The Shadow of the Wind” is a novel by the obscure Catalan author Julián Carax. A boy, Daniel Sempere, sets out to discover Julián’s other works, and becomes involved in tracing the entire history of Carax. Daniel’s friend, who goes by the alias of Fermín Romero de Torres, was imprisoned and tortured in Montjuïc Castle as a result of his involvement in espionage against the government during the Civil War. He helps Daniel in a number of ways, but their probing into the murky past of a number of people who have been either long dead or long forgotten unleashes the dark forces of the murderous Inspector Fumero.
Thus, unravelling a long story that has been buried in the depths of oblivion, Daniel and Fermín come across a love story, the beautiful yet tragic story of Julián and Penélope, both of whom seem to have been missing since 1919—that is, nearly thirty years earlier. Julián, who was the son of the hatter Antoni Fortuny and his wife Sophie Carax (but preferred to use his mother’s last name), and Penélope Aldaya, the only daughter of the extremely wealthy Don Ricardo Aldaya and his beautiful, narcissistic American wife, developed an instant love for each other and lived a clandestine relationship only through casual furtive glances and faint smiles for around four years, after which they decided to elope to Paris, unaware that the shadows of misfortune had been closing in on them ever since they had met. The two lovers are doomed to unknown fates just a week before their supposed elopement, which is meticulously planned by Julián’s best friend, Miquel Moliner—also the son of a wealthy father, who had earned much during the war, including a bad reputation for selling ammunition. It is eventually revealed that Miquel loved Julián more than any brother and finally sacrificed his own life for him, having already abandoned his desires and his youth for causes of charity and his friend’s well-being after his elopement to Paris — although without Penélope, who never turned up for the rendezvous.
