How Carlos Ruiz Zafon Changed My Life: A Beautiful Soul Gone Too Soon

A personal reflection

“Every book, every volume you see here, has a soul. The soul of the person who wrote it and of those who read it and lived and dreamed with it. Every time a book changes hands, every time someone runs his eyes down its pages, its spirit grows and strengthens.” — Carlos Ruiz Zafon, The Shadow of the Wind

This is the line by which I will forever remember Carlos Ruiz Zafon, the Spanish author best known for The Shadow of the Wind who tragically died last summer from colon cancer at the age of 55. I have talked about Zafon numerous times on my podcast, and he figured prominently in a story I wrote recently about my bookstore. But I have not, until now, set down in writing what this man I never met has meant to me.

First, a little biographical information for those who don’t know about him. I say a little because that’s all there is. When he died on June 19, 2020 the public was shocked, because he never revealed that he had been battling cancer for two years. This was totally in line with how diligently he guarded his privacy. As far as he was concerned, the world knew him through his books, which was what mattered.

Zafon was born in Barcelona in 1964 and attended Jesuit schools before taking up a career in advertising. He once said that “for a young man, apart from organized crime or rock and roll, advertising was the best way to earn money.” He left advertising after roughly eight years to write full-time. We also know, or can surmise, that he was a fan of FC Barcelona, as he wore the team’s shirt in several interviews.

He achieved his first literary success in 1993 with the young adult novel The Prince of Mist, a book which is now taught in schools in Spain. This was followed by three more young adult novels before he achieved international fame with The Shadow of the Wind in 2001; the English translation was published in 2004. This was the first of the four books that make up The Cemetery of Forgotten Books series. He is the most-read Spanish author since Miguel de Cervantes.

Another surprise to his fans at the time of his death was that Zafon was married and had been for almost three decades. In the early 1990s he married MariCarmen Bellver, a translator he met while still working in advertising. Zafon said they were “a nation of two.” Ironically, it had been there for all to see on the dedication page of his 2008 novel The Angel’s Game; he dedicated the book to her using this exact phrase.

Like most people, my first exposure to Carlos Ruiz Zafon came shortly after The Shadow of the Wind was published in English (a review where Stephen King raved about it was enough to grab my attention). If you’re a book lover, it quite simply has everything: a mysterious, disfigured author attempting to destroy every last copy of his published works; a hidden library of unfathomable proportions where rescued books are preserved for just the right reader to find; a gothic Barcelona in the 1940s and 1950s that emerges as a character in itself; a little romance, but not too much; and Fermin Romero de Torres, one of the greatest literary characters ever created.

I read the last 300 pages or so in one long overnight marathon, stopping only long enough for more coffee and a smoke break; it’s that kind of book, the one you literally cannot put down. This began my ongoing relationship with Zafon’s greatest novel — and through it Zafon himself — that endures to the present day. What follows are some brief examples of how the man and his books wove their way into my life as a reader, a book collector, a bookseller, and a writer.

As a reader, the impact of Zafon and The Shadow of the Wind goes beyond that overnight reading marathon. Along with The Razor’s Edge and A Moveable Feast, it’s a book I re-read almost every year; it’s a better friend than…well…a lot of my friends. Sorry guys. It is one of my desert island books and should be one of yours too.

As a collector, the book has given me the thing book collectors treasure even more than their actual collection: the thrill of the hunt and the awesome surprise of an unexpected find. My greatest moment as a book hunter came one day in Larry McMurtry’s Booked Up bookstore in Archer City, Texas. Buried in the Books-in-Translation section of Building 3 (not in the expected literature or mystery sections) I discovered a pristine signed first edition of The Shadow of the Wind priced at $40 at a time when signed firsts were going for $150. I snapped it up and in true bookseller fashion (which always competes with my collector side) sold it a few days later. The hunt for its replacement continues, and quite happily.

As a bookseller, Zafon and his novels loomed large over my too brief ownership of The Last Word Bookstore. The Shadow of the Wind was the book I most often put in people’s hands, and it outsold any other book in the store at least five-to-one. It also remains, in a small but important way, part of the building the store was in.

When I was painting the walls before opening, I wrote every book has a soul on every wall in the place in permanent marker, and then put four coats of paint over it. I heard from the next guy to move into the space that he simply put two coats of paint over mine, which means that unless a future tenant strips the paint down to the sheetrock, Zafon’s immortal words will always be there, hidden just like the Cemetery of Forgotten Books. I like that.

As far as Zafon’s impact on me as a writer, it is no exaggeration to say that I continue to try to write my Shadow of the Wind, my novel that will have everything a book lover could want and that will lead my obituary the way it did his. Oddly enough, he may have reached me even more as a writer with The Angel’s Game, the one book in the series that is told from the viewpoint of a writer. If you’re a writer, definitely read it.

The hardest thing for me, and for readers everywhere, is that there won’t ever be a new book from Zafon. Thankfully, though, we have the books he did write, and if you have never read them go do it now. They have a huge part of his soul in them, and he will continue to live on through them forever.