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Summary
Summary
The Prisoner of Heaven returns to the world of The Cemetery of Forgotten Books and the Sempere & Sons bookshop, where Daniel, and his old friend Ferm#65533;n Romero de Torres, are tending shop. Daniel is now married with a son, and Ferm#65533;n is soon to follow. Both men lead relatively happy and quiet lives. Enter an enigmatic visitor--a grim old man with a piercing gaze--who inquires about Ferm#65533;n's whereabouts. When told he is not in, the old man proceeds to buy the most expensive item in the store, a first edition of The Count of Monte Cristo, adds a dedication and leaves it as a present for Ferm#65533;n. When Daniel reveals the details of this unsettling encounter to his friend, Ferm#65533;n reads the dedication, turns pale, and at Daniel's insistence, decides to open up about a past that has come back to haunt him...a story that will leave Daniel questioning his very existence.
Author Notes
Carlos Ruiz Zafón was born in Barcelona, Spain on September 25, 1964. He is a scriptwriter and the author of both adult and young adult novels. His first novel, El Príncipe de la Niebla (The Prince of Mist, 1993) received the Premio Edebé literary prize for young adult fiction. His other young adult novels include El Palacio de la Medianoche (1994), Las Luces de Septiembre (1995), and Marina (1999). His adult novels include La Sombra del Viento (The Shadow of the Wind, 2001) and El Juego del Angel (The Angel's Game, 2008).
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (2)
Guardian Review
Carlos Ruiz Zafon's The Shadow of the Wind was a beautifully made Euro literary thriller that sold more than 15m copies worldwide. The Spanish novelist's latest work is also part of this "cycle of novels set in the literary universe of the Cemetery of Forgotten Books", and features many of the same characters and imaginary writers. Can he pull off the trick again? "That year at Christmas time, every morning dawned laced with frost under leaden skies." We are in late-1950s Barcelona. Daniel Sempere, boy hero of The Shadow of the Wind, is now grown up, working in his father's bookshop. He is married to his childhood sweetheart Bea, while his older friend, Fermin Romero de Torres - former spy and legendary ladykiller - is now engaged. But when a creepy stranger with a porcelain hand turns up one day in the bookshop, the past threatens to unravel this present happiness. As with The Shadow of the Wind, there is a historical story within the story. Set in a prison castle after the victory of Franco in the civil war, with an ambience of lice, cold and summary executions, it features a novelist, imprisoned and denounced as "the worst writer in the world", who is blackmailed into polishing the prison governor's own execrable literary efforts. Melodrama succeeds when there is no embarrassment in its execution, and Zafon is a splendidly solicitous craftsman, careful to give the reader at least as much pleasure as he is evidently having. Scene-setting is crisp, and minor characters expertly sketched: a priest with "the manners of a retired boxer", or a scrivener who guarantees the effects of his erotic love poetry. The evil prison governor, whose eyes are "blue, penetrating and sharp, alive with greed and suspicion", is a movie-villain cliche, but cliche is sometimes just what is needed to maintain the blissful narrative drive of a high-class mystery. The most vividly lovable person here is Fermin, a master of comically flowery rhetoric, who claims that "obstetrics, after free verse, is one of my hobbies". When Daniel complains that it is impossible to argue with him, Fermin shoots back: "That's because of my natural flair for high dialectics, always ready to strike back at the slightest hint of inanity, dear friend." By the end, it's clear that Fermin is not just a comic turn but a kind of hero of resilience. Like his countryman Arturo Perez-Reverte, Zafon combines sincere engagement with genre tradition, with clever touches of the literary postmodern. (The novel's epigraph is by a fictional writer who featured in The Shadow of the Wind.) This is explicitly, and joyously, a book about books, about what can be learned from them (say, how to follow someone in the street), and what is lost when they are lost. Much of the novel's appeal is that of time-travelling tourism, strongly flavoured with literary nostalgia - for a time when a bookshop could be a city's cultural nerve-centre, when a paper-based bureaucracy could be outwitted, when bohemian scribblers could afford to eat world-class creme caramels, and even when money could be "cursed". But beneath the sugared surface there is also political anger. Only belatedly did I realise that this is actually the third novel in Zafon's sequence. Luckily, we are assured that the books can be read in any order. I immediately bought the other, The Angel's Game, to take on holiday. As the imprisoned writer asks in this book: "If you don't trust a novelist, who are you going to trust?" To order The Prisoner of Heaven for pounds 13.59 with free UK p&p call Guardian book service on 0330 333 6846 or go to guardian.co.uk/bookshop - Steven Poole The most vividly lovable person here is [Fermin Romero], a master of comically flowery rhetoric, who claims that "obstetrics, after free verse, is one of my hobbies". When [Daniel Sempere] complains that it is impossible to argue with him, Fermin shoots back: "That's because of my natural flair for high dialectics, always ready to strike back at the slightest hint of inanity, dear friend." By the end, it's clear that Fermin is not just a comic turn but a kind of hero of resilience. - Steven Poole.
Library Journal Review
Acclaimed Spanish author Zafon returns to the dark streets of Barcelona in 1957 with the familiar heroes of The Shadow of the Wind and The Angel's Game. A mysterious stranger's visit to the Sempere bookshop unearths the dark secret and threatens the bright futures of Daniel and Bea Sempere and their friend, Fermin Romero de Torres. Daniel and Fermin must look back to the early days of Franco's dictatorship and the enigma hidden in the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, a collection of lost treasures known only to those who protect it. Peter Kenny does a splendid job of bringing the diverse cast of characters to life. The soft and eerily sweet voice that he uses for the villain, Vall, is especially noteworthy. VERDICT Recommended for bibliophiles and fans of Zafon. [The Harper: Harper Collins hc was a New York Times best seller.-Ed.]-Saori Wendy Herman, M.B. Ketchum Memorial Lib., -Fullerton, CA (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
