Having spent some weeks in Barcelona this past summer, I was intrigued to read Carlos Ruiz Zafón’s series of novels about writers and booksellers in Franco-era Spain. I actually started with the third book in the series, The Prisoner of Heaven. I enjoyed it immensely and am hoping to read the other two, The Angel’s Game and The Shadow of the Wind before the end of the year. A fourth novel is expected soon, to complete the set. The books are not time sequential and do not have to be read in order.
Daniel Sempere runs a bookshop with his father, just off Las Ramblas in the gothic quarter of Barcelona. Daniel, his wife Beatriz and their newly born son, Julián live above the shop. They are happy, but Daniel has some doubts about his wife’s commitment to their marriage. Sempere and Son have only one employee, Fermín Romero de Tores and it is Fermín’s story that is divulged inThe Prisoner of Heaven.
Cannonball Read V 