Barcelona, 1945. On a grey dawn just after the war, a bookseller takes his young son Daniel to a hidden place called the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, where the boy is told to choose a single volume and protect it for life. Daniel picks a novel called The Shadow of the Wind by the obscure author Julián Carax, and is swept away by it. But when he tries to find Carax's other books, he discovers that someone has been methodically hunting down and burning every copy the author ever wrote.
Daniel's quest to solve the mystery of Julián Carax pulls him into a labyrinth of old secrets, ruined families, and a city still haunted by the Spanish Civil War. As he grows from boy to young man, his own life begins to echo Carax's with uncanny precision, and a faceless, fire-scarred figure who calls himself by the name of the devil in Carax's novels draws ever closer.
The first of Carlos Ruiz Zafón's Cemetery of Forgotten Books quartet, The Shadow of the Wind is a lush, gothic tale of literature, obsession, and love. Atmospheric and intricately plotted, it is a bestselling love letter to books and to the shadowed streets of Barcelona.