Carlos Ruiz Zafón: The Angel's Game

Terry Mapes reviews Carlos Ruiz Zafón's The Angel's Game.

For most of Carlos Ruiz Zafon's novel "The Angel's Game" (Anchor, 531 pp., $15.95 paper), you feel like you might just have a masterpiece in your hands.
Then it all comes apart. It begins to seem a little too outrageous, a bit too farfetched. The ending doesn't equal the beginning or most of what comes in between.
Still, it's fun while it lasts. The story is told by David Martin, a gifted writer in Barcelona whose talents have been wasted on pulp novels. Then a mysterious businessman from Paris named Andreas Corelli offers him an incredible amount of money to write a holy text for a new religion -- the details of which don't really matter.
At first it seems like easy money. Gradually Martin comes to realize that he has, quite literally, sold his soul to the devil.

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Carlos Ruiz Zafón: The Prince of Mist

Nicholas Tucker reviews Carlos Ruiz Zafón's The Prince of Mist.

Author of The Shadow of the Wind, the most-read Spanish novel since Don Quixote, Carlos Ruiz Zafón began his writing career eight years before with the first of four stories aimed at teenage readers. The opening volume, The Prince of Mist, now appears in an English edition, fluently translated by Lucia Graves, with the others following in the next three years. It won the prestigious Edebé Prize for Young Adult Fiction on publication in 1993, and with its companion novels has sold over three million copies. So does this first effort promise to be yet another sensation outside Spain along with Zafón's The Angel's Game, which is currently selling in shed-loads all over Europe?
Rambling Gothic novels whose sub-plots contain yet more sub-plots take up a lot of paper, but in these early days Zafón too often rushes his literary fences in his effort to convey as much terror as possible in a cramped space. Writing for a younger audience has also led him into providing various over-anxious explanations as the plot develops, which negate any gradual build-up of tension against a background made even more fearful precisely because nothing within it ever seems totally clear. Even so, the main story remains gripping enough, revolving around such hardy perennials as a haunted house on the coast and the discovery of old home movies that indicate the evil that had happened before and is now in the process of happening again.

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Carlos Ruiz Zafón: The Prince of Mist

A review of Carlos Ruiz Zafón's The Prince of Mist.

In 2004, the Spanish author Carlos Ruiz Zafon earned international success and acclaim with his breakthrough novel The Shadow Of The Wind. His books have since sold over 15 million copies worldwide.
But before he wrote this bestselling debut novel for adults, he had already published four books in Spanish for younger readers. The first of these, The Prince Of Mist, has just been translated into English for the first time.
The Prince Of Mist is set in Spain during the Second World War and is the story of 13-year-old Max Carver and his family, who move from the city to the countryside to get away from the war.

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Interview with Carlos Ruiz Zafón

Susan Mansfield interviews Carlos Ruiz Zafón.

It's raining the day I meet Carlos Ruiz Zafon, so we begin with a discussion about rain. London rain, according to Zafon, is "annoying, not spectacular".
"I spend a lot of time in LA, and when it rains there you get the entire rainfall for the year in two days, raindrops the size of mangoes. And in Barcelona, the Mediterranean storms come up from the sea, thunder and lightning, it's like the end of the world."
Readers of Zafon's novels, The Shadow Of The Wind and The Angel's Game, will recognise those rainstorms. They will also recognise the natural flair for drama. In Zafon's world it's not enough for rain to be rain, it has to be a spooky, mist-swirling drizzle, or an apocalyptic downpour.

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Interview with Carlos Ruiz Zafón (In Spanish)

Sergi Doria interviews Spanish author Carlos Ruiz Zafón.

Los lectores son lectores, no importa dónde estén. A lo largo de los años he aprendido que las personas que aprecian la literatura, el lenguaje, las ideas y los libros son muy parecidas en todas partes y que lo que les une trasciende fronteras y diferencias culturales.

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Interview with Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Breandain O'Shea interviews Spanish author Carlo Ruiz Zafón.

Deutsche Welle: How have Spanish and Catalan literature influenced your writing?
Carlos Ruiz Zafon: I look at literature as one big thing. I never think of it as coming from the English tradition, or the French tradition, or the Catalan tradition, or the Russian tradition. To me, literature itself is a country, and that's what I am interested in. So, I never thought of myself as being influenced by one side or the other.
I am interested in specific authors; in good writing in general, wherever it may come from. And in that sense, I am very interested in writers from (different) countries. I know that there are people who tend to be very political about that, or tend to see schools of thought - but it's not the way I think.
For me, there's good writing and bad writing. And I am interested in good writing.

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Book Review: The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

With the help of various colourful characters, including a voluble anti-fascist ex-spy, Daniel starts trying to piece together the story of Carax's life, which turns out to be a splendidly morbid Gothic melodrama. He also finds love with his best friend's gorgeous sister, who is engaged to a charmless Francoist, and incurs the wrath of her rich, reactionary dad. A psychopathic fascist cop starts taking an interest in Daniel's activities, and it soon becomes clear that Carax's fate is a matter of more than scholarly interest to everyone Daniel meets on his perilous trail.

With its bookish outer story and hints of the supernatural, The Shadow of the Wind has inevitably been compared to Arturo Perez-Reverte's The Dumas Club. Zafon's brow is less high than Perez-Reverte's, and his puzzles are less ingenious, but his story is impressively well-rounded.

Humour, horror, politics and romance are skilfully deployed, and although the cardinal plot-twists aren't hard to guess, the overall effect is hugely satisfying. Zafon, a former screenwriter, is particularly good at contrast and pacing: the book's 400 pages whip past with incredible speed.

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Spanish Literature