The Shadow of the Wind

The international literary sensation, about a boy's quest through the secrets and shadows of postwar Barcelona for a mysterious author whose book has proved as dangerous to own as it is impossible to forget.

Barcelona, 1945 - just after the war, a great world city lies in shadow, nursing its wounds, and a boy named Daniel awakes on his eleventh birthday to find that he can no longer remember his mother’s face. To console his only child, Daniel’s widowed father, an antiquarian book dealer, initiates him into the secret of the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, a library tended by Barcelona’s guild of rare-book dealers as a repository for books forgotten by the world, waiting for someone who will care about them again. Daniel’s father coaxes him to choose a volume from the spiraling labyrinth of shelves, one that, it is said, will have a special meaning for him. And Daniel so loves the novel he selects, The Shadow of the Wind by one Julian Carax, that he sets out to find the rest of Carax’s work. To his shock, he discovers that someone has been systematically destroying every copy of every book this author has written. In fact, he may have the last one in existence. Before Daniel knows it his seemingly innocent quest has opened a door into one of Barcelona’s darkest secrets, an epic story of murder, magic, madness and doomed love. And before long he realizes that if he doesn’t find out the truth about Julian Carax, he and those closest to him will suffer horribly.

As with all astounding novels, The Shadow of the Wind sends the mind groping for comparisons—The Crimson Petal and the White? The novels of Arturo Pérez-Reverte? Of Victor Hugo? Love in the Time of Cholera?—but in the end, as with all astounding novels, no comparison can suffice. As one leading Spanish reviewer wrote, "The originality of Ruiz Zafón’s voice is bombproof and displays a diabolical talent. The Shadow of the Wind announces a phenomenon in Spanish literature." An uncannily absorbing historical mystery, a heart-piercing romance, and a moving homage to the mystical power of books, The Shadow of the Wind is a triumph of the storyteller’s art.(cited from GoodReads website)

Limited: 1000 numbered copies, signed by the author
Lettered: 26 signed copies, lavishly bound, housed in a handcrafted traycase

Prisoner of Heaven

Dust jacket and interior illustrations by Vincent Chong

Carlos Ruiz Zafon’s “secret history of Barcelona” continues, to mesmerizing effect, in The Prisoner of Heaven, the third installment in his steadily deepening portrait of an endlessly fascinating city, at the heart of which lies the mysterious and seductive Cemetery of Forgotten Books.

The story begins, appropriately enough, in a bookstore, when Daniel Sempere (a figure familiar to readers of The Shadow of the Wind) encounters a mysterious stranger who leaves an enigmatic message for Fermin Romero de Torres, Daniel’s oldest and closest friend. That message leads to a series of revelations regarding Fermin’s previously undisclosed past. Those revelations move the story from its point of departure in 1957 to the darker, more oppressive Barcelona of 1940, when the brutal Fascist regime of Generalissimo Francisco Franco assumed undisputed leadership of Spain. What follows is a political horror story that involves Fermin, a corrupt prison administrator, and imprisoned novelist David Martin, whose Faustian bargain formed the central thread of Zafon’s 2009 novel, The Angel’s Game. The story Fermin tells, which encompasses murder, literary fraud, and a hidden cache of stolen money, reaches from the squalor of a subterranean cell into Daniel’s own life, illuminating some previously obscure corners of his troubled family history.

The Prisoner of Heaven is sure to speak directly to admirers of Umberto Eco, Arturo Perez-Reverte, and Alexandre Dumas, whose The Count of Monte Cristo plays a significant role in the narrative. But it should also appeal to anyone with a taste for elegant, suspenseful storytelling filled with color, drama, and unexpected turnings. This is popular fiction at its absolute best, a book that no one but Carlos Ruiz Zafon could have written.

The Prisoner of Heaven, like The Shadow of the Wind and The Angel’s Game before it, has become an international phenomenon, a best-seller in dozens of countries. Subterranean Press is proud to announce this deluxe limited edition, which will feature a fine paper (80# Finch), deluxe cloth, a sewn binding, and be printed in two colors throughout.

Limited: 500 numbered copies, bound in premium cloth, printed in two colors throughout, with both two-color and full-color illustrations, signed by the author and sold out at the publisher

Lettered: 26 copies, handbound in the finest material, signed by the author, housed in a custom traycase and sold out at the publisher

The Angel's Game

Illustrated by Vincent Chong

In 2004, Carlos Ruiz Zafon made a spectacular English language debut with The Shadow of the Wind, a brilliantly constructed novel set in Barcelona in the aftermath of World War II. Its central symbol and most indelible image was an intricate Borgesian labyrinth called The Cemetery of Forgotten Books. Zafon’s latest, The Angel’s Game, is also set in Barcelona and also revisits the mysterious Cemetery. It is, however, neither a sequel nor a prequel, but an independent narrative that elaborates a coherent, increasingly complex fictional universe.

Zafon’s narrator/hero is David Martin, an orphan brought up in true Dickensian squalor. After years of struggle, he achieves success writing a popular series of “penny dreadfuls” called City of the Damned. In time, his work comes to the attention of Andreas Corelli, a Parisian publisher with a truly Faustian proposition. Corelli offers David 100,00 francs if he will use his narrative gifts to create a viable new religion.

The extraordinary tale that follows is many things at once: mystery, love story, supernatural thriller, historical drama, gothic romance, and meditation on the primal importance of stories, of narrative itself. As the author reminds us throughout this novel, books have souls, and reflect the souls of both their readers and their writers. The Angel’s Game beautifully illustrates this proposition, and offers further proof that Carlos Ruiz Zafon is one of the most compelling—and unpredictable—storytellers of the modern era.

The Angel’s Game, like its predecessor, The Shadow of the Wind has become an international phenomenon, a best-seller in dozens of countries. Subterranean Press is proud to announce this deluxe limited edition, which will feature a fine paper (80# Finch), deluxe cloth, a sewn binding, and be printed in two colors throughout, with copious illustrations—including full color plates and duotone chapter heads—by Vincent Chong.

Limited to 750 signed numbered copies, bound in premium cloth, printed in two colors throughout, including both two-color and full-color illustrations and sold out at the publisher

Lettered: Limited to 26 signed and lettered copies, handbound in the finest material, housed in a custom traycase

The Labyrinth of the Spirits

Dust jacket and interior illustrations by Vincent Chong.

In 2001, Carlo Ruiz Zafon published The Shadow of the Wind, the opening movement in a four-volume cycle collectively entitledThe Cemetery of Forgotten Books. Now, Zafon brings that cycle to a resonant, deeply satisfying conclusion with The Labyrinth of the Spirits, his largest, richest, most absorbing accomplishment to date.

Each of the four novels serves as both as both an independent narrative and a point of entry into the lives of a gallery of unforgettable characters, chief among them the Sempere family, booksellers eking out a living in the ravaged, war-torn city of Barcelona. Taken together, these four volumes form a kind of secret history of Barcelona, one dominated and symbolized by the eponymous Cemetery. Zafon then sets that imaginary history against the larger history of a city—and country—torn by civil war and forced to endure nearly forty years of state sponsored terror under the Fascist regime of Francisco Franco. The resulting fusion of literature and politics, history and art, is one of the significant accomplishments of modern popular fiction.

Like its predecessors, The Labyrinth of the Spirits generates its own central narrative while echoing and amplifying themes and storylines from the earlier books. The vast, complex narrative begins with a single event: the disappearance of Minister of Culture Mauricio Valls. When Alicia Gris, Zafon’s heroine and a magnificent fictional creation, begins to investigate, she uncovers a series of sordid plots involving retribution, mass murder, and the serial kidnapping of newly orphaned children. It is a grim, often harrowing story, and Zafon brings it to life in riveting, unflinching fashion.

On another, more personal level, these four books offer a profound and moving defense of the power of the imagination. Horrors abound in Zafon’s fictional universe, but so do their benign counterparts: love, friendship, family, ideas and, most centrally, stories. The Labyrinth of the Spirits is, among other things, the culmination of a massive celebration of books, writers, and the life of the mind. It is also an indisputable masterpiece that is likely to endure—and speak to readers—for a very long time to come.

The Labyrinth of the Sprits, like The Prisoner of Heaven, The Shadow of the Wind and The Angel’s Game before it, has become an international phenomenon, a best-seller in dozens of countries.

Subterranean Press is proud to announce this deluxe limited edition, which will feature a fine paper (80# Finch), deluxe cloth, a sewn binding, and be printed in two colors throughout.

Limited: 500 numbered copies, bound in premium cloth, printed in two colors throughout, with both two-color and full-color illustrations, signed by the author

Lettered: 26 copies, handbound in the finest material, signed by the author, housed in a custom traycase

Mirina

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