The Shadow of the Wind

 Book Review

Title: The Shadow of the Wind

Author: Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Publisher: Phoenix, 2004

Pages: 510

 

Some plots are too perfect to be credible. But they keep the reader hooked to the last. Add some mysteries and complexities, the novel becomes a terrible whirlpool that draws your very soul in. Carlos Ruiz Zafon’s The Shadow of the Wind is one such novel.

The novel is about memories and vendettas, love struggling against hate, virtue struggling to survive in a world of evil. Originally written in Spanish, the novel is set in the post-civil war Barcelona. But the pre-war Barcelona keeps coming up throughout the plot. In fact, the plot moves like two intertwined serpents that are inseparable. The past is resurrected at every turn on the present road, that too with a new vengeance. There is poison all along. There is blood spilt at some places. There is more darkness than light.

Is it evil that makes this world so dark? ‘Not evil,’ says Fermin, one of the chief characters. The world is a ‘moronic’ place, according to him. ‘Evil presupposes a moral decision, intention, and some forethought. A moron or a lout, however, doesn’t stop to think or reason. He acts on instinct, like an animal, convinced that he’s doing good, that he’s always right, and sanctimoniously proud to go around fucking up … anyone he perceives to be different from himself, be it because of skin colour, creed, language, nationality…’ The world would have been a better place with ‘more thoroughly evil people and fewer borderline pigheads.’ [Underscore added]

The plot unfolds in a thoroughly “moronic” world, be it the pre-war or post-war Barcelona. In the pre-war Barcelona of aristocracy and family honour and in the post-war Barcelona of dictator Franco, it is the scum that rises above the others. The good are suppressed, tortured or eliminated. The ordinary people are helpless. The sanctimonious nationalist morons thrive and rule.

Ten-year-old Daniel Sempere comes across a novel titled The Shadow of the Wind by a mysterious author named Julian Carax. Daniel is curious to find out more about the author none of whose books are apparently available anywhere. A mysterious person named Lain Coubert, which is actually the name of the devil in the only surviving novel of Carax, has been setting fire to every book of Carax. Lain Coubert is after Daniel too.

Daniel grows to the age of 18 by the time his quest after the mystery hurls him into the middle of a diabolic concoction of events in which Julian Carax and a few other school classmates of his were viciously engaged. Julian fell in love with Penelope, sister of Jorge who was not merely a classmate but also son of a conceited aristocrat. The aristocrat has another reason too, which his vanity won’t ever let him mention to anyone, for smothering this love between his daughter and the son of a plain hatter. This crushed romance is one of the many tragedies in the novel as well as one of the many complex mysteries in the plot.

Julian is made to leave for France by Miquel, another classmate. Jorge turns vindictive. There is another classmate, son of a menial, Francisco Javier Fumero, who has a bigger reason to hate Julian: he was obsessively in love with Penelope. The moment he saw Julian and Penelope together, their lips swallowing each other, he became the demon that was just waiting within him to get a body. Eventually he joined the army, fought in the Civil War first on the Republican side and then served Franco’s police, and betrayed many on his way to higher posts. Fumero becomes the ultra-villain of the novel: ‘the sanctimonious nationalist who fucks up the lives’ of too many others.

Zafon weaves an extremely intricate plot adding a few more characters who twist one another’s fates inadvertently or malevolently. The good does not necessarily win in the end, nor does evil get its retribution. But there is light in this dark world too where the lives of most genuine people are condemned to fall apart slowly, so slowly that the people don’t even realise that their life is falling apart until they hit the bottom. But many rise and move on. There is enough light for one to move on.

Zafon’s success lies in making us see both the dense darkness and the feeble light, and the mysterious interlace of the two. “Mother Nature is the meanest of bitches, that’s the sad truth,” as one of the good characters, Fermin, says. Ours is a sad, bad world. “Telling the truth should be our last resort,” the heroic character goes on, “even more so when you’re dealing with a nun.” Even religion is no light in Zafon’s world.

The world is formidably darker than we would like to imagine. But Zafon’s plot has the neatness of perfection. Everything moves in the end towards a resounding climax. Isn’t it a bit too resounding?