ZAFON, Carlos Ruiz; Lucia GRAVES [Trans.]
The Shadow of the Wind
New York: The Penguin Press, 2004
Large 8vo., quarter maroon cloth over forest green boards, lettered in gilt to spine, and to upper board with author’s initials; mock marbled endpapers; together in the unclipped pictorial dustwrapper ($24.95 to front flap) designed by Darren Haggar; pp. [ix], 4-486, [iv]; the book essentially fine, just a touch bumped at spine tips; the wrapper fine.
First US edition, with full number line 1-10, this copy neatly signed by the author in blue ink to the title page.
“I still remember the day my father took me to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books for the first time…”
Thus begins the exquisite opening lines of Zafon’s masterpiece, The Shadow of the Wind, the first and most famous in Zafon’s ‘Cemetery of Forgotten Books’ canon. Inspired by such writers as Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Leo Tolstoy and Miguel de Cervantes, the latter of whom it is said in Spain is Zafon’s only competitor in terms of literary impact, the US edition benefits from a particularly poetic translation by Lucia Graves (daughter of Robert Graves). The plot traces the life of Daniel Sempere Martin and his family of antiquarian booksellers as they encounter cemeteries of forgotten books, mysterious writers with scarred pasts, ghosts lurking in the shadows, unsolved mysteries involving fires and murder, and fated love. Championed by such writers as Stephen King, who wrote that it “is the real deal, a novel full of cheesy splendour and creaking trapdoors, a novel where even the subplots have subplots”, Shadow has since sold over 15 million copies worldwide.
When Zafon died at the age of just 55 in 2020, the world lost a profoundly unique writer, and one whose legacy and popularity follow him today. A truly stunning masterpiece of a novel, and this bookseller’s favourite novel.
“I was raised among books, making invisible friends in pages that seemed cast from dust and whose smell I carry on my hands to this day…”
ZAFON, Carlos Ruiz; Lucia GRAVES [Trans.]
The Shadow of the Wind
New York: The Penguin Press, 2004
Large 8vo., quarter maroon cloth over forest green boards, lettered in gilt to spine, and to upper board with author’s initials; mock marbled endpapers; together in the unclipped pictorial dustwrapper ($24.95 to front flap) designed by Darren Haggar; pp. [ix], 4-486, [iv]; the book essentially fine, just a touch bumped at spine tips; the wrapper fine.
First US edition, with full number line 1-10, this copy neatly signed by the author in blue ink to the title page.
“I still remember the day my father took me to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books for the first time…”
Thus begins the exquisite opening lines of Zafon’s masterpiece, The Shadow of the Wind, the first and most famous in Zafon’s ‘Cemetery of Forgotten Books’ canon. Inspired by such writers as Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Leo Tolstoy and Miguel de Cervantes, the latter of whom it is said in Spain is Zafon’s only competitor in terms of literary impact, the US edition benefits from a particularly poetic translation by Lucia Graves (daughter of Robert Graves). The plot traces the life of Daniel Sempere Martin and his family of antiquarian booksellers as they encounter cemeteries of forgotten books, mysterious writers with scarred pasts, ghosts lurking in the shadows, unsolved mysteries involving fires and murder, and fated love. Championed by such writers as Stephen King, who wrote that it “is the real deal, a novel full of cheesy splendour and creaking trapdoors, a novel where even the subplots have subplots”, Shadow has since sold over 15 million copies worldwide.
When Zafon died at the age of just 55 in 2020, the world lost a profoundly unique writer, and one whose legacy and popularity follow him today. A truly stunning masterpiece of a novel, and this bookseller’s favourite novel.
“I was raised among books, making invisible friends in pages that seemed cast from dust and whose smell I carry on my hands to this day…”
