Carlos Ruiz Zafon - the author of fairy tales for great people

in #book7 years ago (edited)

A few years ago, traveling by plane, I saw a book I had not heard before, which obviously intrigued me, especially since the volume ("The Shadow of the Wind" in spanish) had the bestseller mention . It was Carlos Ruiz Zafon, whose name I was not supposed to forget, and that I was looking for through the bookstores until the book was published in a different language.

The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

The first novel I read from her seven published novels was the "Marina", which seduced me irretrievably and which remains my favorite, at least until now (I have To read "The Lights of September" and "The Prisoner of the Heaven"). Probably in this novel I felt the most important the Zafon's spirit, who told that this volume is the closest to the soul, motivating it to be a book that he strongly associates with memories of his childhood and things which he has lost on the road to maturity.

All his novels have woken up my childhood memories, and the supernatural elements have embraced these memories in a magic that I can not wait to escape after a day abounding in not very gratifying realities.

In childhood and adolescence I'm looking for books that can help my mind, now I'm looking for books to help me escape from my everyday life and to give me a good enough state that I can not get overwhelmed by the everyday routine. So I read five unmanaged novels and I left two aside just because I wanted to have reserves for "black days".


Carlos Ruiz Zafon debuted with a book to be for teenagers, Prince of Mind. As such, reading it, I felt once again the specific experiences of that age, although I have been through some years of teenage years. In fact, every single of his novels, whether part of the teen series or part of the series of adult volumes, created the same feeling of solidarity with her characters. I have become friends with each other, without betraying the others, and I have lived their fears, fights, hopes or joys together, because his characters were my memories.

"Sometimes, the most real things are happening only in imagination, Oscar," he answered. We do not remember anything that has never happened "- this quote from the Navy surmounts the essence of Zafon's writing, an uncomplicated yet mysterious writing that gives you some palpitations, the result of an overflowing imagination in fairytale elements.

Carlos Ruiz Zafon | Photo source: www.tierra.it

Carlos Ruiz Zafon also told that the characters and intrigue of the series of volumes for adolescents ("Prince of the Mist", "The Palace of the Blood" and "The Lights of September") came from his deep interest in the scary stories of mysteries and The ambition of approaching Gothic-Victorian school writing combined with a modern, dynamic visual technique. He added that the stories come from the heart, so while writing about ghosts and evil spirits, you are actually trying to find out what's wrong with your life, how to use your experiences ...

The action of the novel ‘’The angel's game’’ takes place in Barcelona in the 1920s. A young writer obsessed with an impossible love receives from a mysterious editor the offer to write a book that never existed, in exchange for promising not only a fortune but even more than that. In its brilliant style, with impeccable narrative accuracy, the author of the Wind Shadow novel carries us back to Barcelona in the early twentieth century and to the Caged Books Cemetery, giving us a novel with a captivating intrigue, a love story about the unlikely ways of life and a wandering through a mysterious labyrinth where the magic of books, passion and friendship are shifting into a storytelling.

In the adult series (The Shadow of the Wind, The Angel's Game and The Prisoner of the Sky), the books are raised to the rank of characters. Conclude with a quote from the Wind Shadow - "Cards are mirrors, you see in them only what you already have within you." In Carlos Ruiz Zafon's books I discovered that the magic of childhood still belongs to me and I invite you to discover yourself through the fairy tales of great people