![]() Narrator Daniel Sempere is seeking some conclusion to the story of 30s novelist Julián Carax, a "remarkably unsuccessful" writer whose book The Shadow of the Wind has taken a hold over his life. Many of its secrets may be sinister, but we have a sense too of a realm of mystery the regime can't reach, a place in which a taxi ride can become a romantic quest. Yet such people will snatch at scraps - and, as Zafón shows, find real sustenance in a city streetscape whose every corner tells a story. Stalked by secret police, with only a kitsch and collaborationist Catholicism for spiritual comfort, they lead lives of unrelieved monotony and hardship. Survivors of civil war, its people hang on grimly, with no apparent expectation of better times. ![]() Its buildings pockmarked by gunfire or abandoned by bankrupt dynasties, it is a place in material and metaphorical ruins. ![]() ![]() The 1940s Barcelona of Carlos Ruiz Zafón's new novel is by no means the trendy tourist destination of today rather, it's a city shut down for the duration in death and fear. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |