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Few contemporary novels have gripped readers with such a sense of place and mystery as Carlos Ruiz Zafón’s international bestseller The Shadow of the Wind. Set in postwar Barcelona, the novel drips with atmosphere, from its old bookshops, gracious cafés, spooky mansions and shadowy churches. At the heart of it all lies the ancient Cemetery of Forgotten Books, where young Daniel Sempere discovers a novel by the unknown Julián Carax and is promptly hurled into a terrifying literary mystery.

Now it’s time to revisit old Barcelona, to return to the bookshop of Sempere and Son, to knock again at the Cemetery’s portal. Carlos Ruiz Zafón is back with The Angel’s Game, another deliciously decadent helping of the uncanny. This time the action is set in the 1920s, but some characters from the earlier book appear. Why has he in effect written a prequel?

‘I originally had this idea of trying to create four different stories that were interconnected and yet not necessarily sequential,’ he explains. ‘Four stories that could be read in any order.’ He planned all four to be parts of one big novel, called The Shadow of the Wind. However, this soon proved impractical. ‘I realised it would be a monstrous 3,000-page novel. Then I thought that the right way to do this is to write four separate novels and create a kind of labyrinth with four points of entry that lead to the heart, which is always the Cemetery of Forgotten Books.’

Each book will shift the viewpoint slightly. He elaborates: ‘The Shadow of the Wind is a novel with a reader’s point of view. It’s about the romance of literature, an idealised view of books, and it’s from the perspective of people who love books.’ The Angel’s Game, in contrast, switches focus to the producers of literature, the writers and publishers. ‘Yes, I thought it would be interesting to step inside the kitchen and see how things are cooked,’ he smiles. 

David Martín, a precocious young journalist, is the pseudonymous author of a trashy weekly serial, who all the while dreams of writing his masterpiece rather than the schlock which brings in the bacon. A wealthy but untalented literary dilettante named Don Pedro Vidal makes the youth his protégé. Cristina, the girl they both love, comes to David with a proposition: why doesn’t David secretly rework Vidal’s own unpublishable novel? The result is hailed as a masterpiece, while David’s own novel, published the same week, is dismissed as the work of a fool. Cristina marries Vidal and David discovers he has a terminal illness. A mysterious publisher named Andreas Corelli steps into David’s life with an irresistible offer: a fabulous sum for a very particular commission. David moves into the ruined Tower House to start work but discovers, via the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, that a former resident, whose initials were also DM, seems to have had dealings with Corelli decades before. But it can’t really be the same man. Can it?

I ask Zafón whether, in the portrait of the tormented Martín, struggling to complete his commission, he is satirising the writer’s life.

‘I’m a much more fortunate person than David Martín,’ he laughs, ‘so my writing experience is much easier and safer! The thing with David is he’s overworking himself to death. I had to do this book in a darker, more cynical way, because I didn’t think it would be right to use the same kind of idealised, romanticised view of literature that is seen in The Shadow of the Wind. I thought it would be interesting to get behind the curtain and see things from a different angle.’

But David describes the pains of writing as ‘squeezing your brain until it hurts’. Is this Zafón’s experience also? Zafón becomes animated: ‘In many ways, writing is a fight against your own limitations. There’s nothing else holding you back. Writing itself is just ink and paper, a computer, typewriter – whatever you use. You can’t say, well, you know, I didn’t have the budget, I didn’t have the resources. Sometimes I feel I’m also squeezing my brains and trying to make something better and I don’t know how. It’s very frustrating.’

Before his success with The Shadow of the Wind, Zafón was an acclaimed children’s author in Spain, and also a Hollywood scriptwriter. Dissatisfaction with the lowly status of the writer on a film set pushed him into working solo. ‘At the end of the day, movies are just stories, so they need somebody to make them up,’ he says ruefully. ‘But in many ways they try to treat writers like highly paid whores. You want the prostitute, but you constantly remind them that that’s all they are. You have to show some contempt: “Now get out of here!”’

Film-making analogies abound in Zafón’s conversation. Crafting his own novels ‘is like making a movie in which you did everything – from the wardrobe to the music to the light, to the editing to the acting... Everything!’ He refers to a thrilling scene where David takes a cablecar ride across Barcelona harbour as ‘an action sequence’. He describes the final edit of a book as like being in the cutting room. He calls his spooky, gothic descriptions of buildings and streets ‘production design’. He’s even written a soundtrack for The Angel’s Game (a former professional musician, he likes to create musical sketches to accompany scenes and characters) and a soundtrack for The Shadow of the Wind that you can hear at www.carlosruizzafon.co.uk.

But when it comes to the idea of making movies of his creations, he digs his heels in. ‘As a matter of fact, I don’t want them to be movies,’ he says firmly. ‘There have been a lot of offers and a lot of interest, and I know a lot of people in the film industry, but to me these are novels. It would be a betrayal to transform them into something else. Not everything has to be a movie or a TV series or a video game or a collection of stamps! Nothing tells a story with the power and depth and richness that a novel does, if it’s done right. The best film you’re ever going to see of The Shadow of the Wind or of The Angel’s Game is the one you see in your mind when you’re reading. The movie is already there.’

He still lives part of the year in Los Angeles and loves it. ‘I tend to be in a better mood and more productive when I’m in LA,’ he admits. ‘When you come from a place as old and haunted as Barcelona, and you come to a place that is all about reinvention and change, it’s a great contrast. Actually, LA is much older than it seems, but you would never know, because there is not a sense of memory in the stones, in the buildings. I find it very liberating to be in a place which is essentially what you make of it.’

He recalls with a grin the publisher who told him years ago: ‘If you set a novel in Barcelona, it’s the kiss of death!’ His success has even prompted a local tourist boom: ‘Right now in Barcelona there are three or four companies that organise walking tours around the scenes of the books. In the last 20 years or so, the city has become known as a sunny, touristic place. That is something very recent. But it’s not just a place with boutiques and a lot of cafés where tourists go at the weekend. The real essence of Barcelona is far from sunny.’

Follow him now into the Calle Arco del Teatro, where a gloomy alley runs deep into the Raval quarter. Stop at the carved wooden door that creaks open, leading to ‘the carcass of a palace, a place of echoes and shadows’. Forget tourist Barcelona. Turn from the sunlight to the shade and enter the Cemetery of Forgotten Books for another terrifying adventure. 

Further reading...

The Angel's Game
by Carlos Ruiz Zafón
Weidenfeld & Nicolson
Buy now

And why not discover four more mysteries for bibliophiles?