was the month of April this year and I had a forced trip to Barcelona to take care of some paperwork. One morning in the Peruvian Consulate and Asian shops around to buy food at my wife species, and from there to enjoy the city, around a Peruvian restaurant to eat a ceviche that meets achiever hidden passions and I was time-it was most bookstores and go-to me from past issues like a woman scorned shopping with the husband's credit card.
A few blocks from where I live, here in Vigo, is a another library to which I will from time to time to dig some curiosity, and sometimes even kill the worm by me in some interesting publication. Not bad. But to get to Barcelona is like entering a literary paradise. There are all the books, everyone. And how happy you start to explore the four floors of the Plaza Catalunya FNAC [1] or slip through the streets of the Gothic Quarter in search of old booksellers and unexpected issues hidden in old shelves. A pleasure like few I try to make the most, like weirdo, in a city always willing and open to everyone.
By chance at that time appeared on the market the last book by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, Game Angel [2], the second part of the trilogy of the Cemetery of Forgotten Books. I remembered that phrase a few years ago when someone told me vaguely that time the book was becoming a bestseller. It was Shadow of the Wind [3], the book that became famous millionaire while the English writer who has lived long ago in California.
Then that afternoon I bought the first of two books, among other acquisitions, because logic dictates it and because I try to be very logical about everything, and that night I started reading the synopsis excited back cover on old booksellers of the Barcelona-forties, the story of a boy who visits the Cemetery of Forgotten Books of the hand of his father and get a book that opens up a mystery that covers the city and confusing literature on the same atmosphere of night and fog. The next day I rushed downtown to walk the streets where they walked their characters and recognizing stops, subway stations that were depicted in their pages. And I discovered that there is even a tour of the streets where the story of the book and was not the only one who was there after reading it. I was shocked to discover a literary Barcelona while character. Especially because the years pass and still the same. I thought a little in Lima, which appears in a thousand stories, and I thought that the best that was certainly discussed and portrayed Julio Ramón Ribeyro. In order that the book took me so my stay in Catalonia, three days. And I went to the pleasure of reading an author for me hitherto unknown, who passionately loved literature.
And when I reached the last page, I understood why this story had sold over eight million copies and been translated into almost every language [4]. He was convinced that Ruiz Zafon life had stopped writing the novel and these figures and become a best seller was the wonderful consequences of a domino effect. The success of his novel had nothing to do with the Da Vincis Code or The Tenth Symphony or secret dinners that can easily appeal to morbid group. This time the plot had its own universe and its author had given birth to her own history from a simple idea, in the fantastic setting Cemetery of Forgotten Books.
So just got to Vigo, as I handed my wife the teriyaki sauce and sesame oil and seaweed and other spices that came in the suitcase, I was commenting on the good book I had bought and the same day was a couple of blocks from home buying the second installment, which had been heralded as the most anticipated of the year, then the Cemetery of Forgotten Books. And closing doors and windows and I left the world to get into reading. And the result was a big disappointment.
I say
about movies that sequels are never better than the first. With honorable exceptions such as The Godfather II, for example. The last of Ruiz Zafon is far from what he accomplished with Shadow of the Wind, but how they sold and how people queuing in mind the book fair has the world to get an autograph from the author. I've seen him grab the attention of the media, the organizers of the ordinary people, those who know and those who do not. Is that Ruiz Zafon must thank the rest of his life to the first delivery that this second band everywhere and at all times. Because if nothing existed would be the same.
No But what causes the most impression is that so far no comment on this new book, which nobody has come to say that the issue was left with large and that history does not deserve so many pages and so much effort. Nobody said a peep, or at least I still have not heard. And Ruiz Zafon has achieved what few writers in this world, no matter what anyone says, no matter what he writes, his name associated with the Cemetery of Forgotten Books is larger than any commentary, is stronger than any other publication, has its own life, the Harry Potter effect, and no one can stop him, nor himself. And therefore will continue to sell millions of copies and generating queues in search of autographs. In good time for him and for literature.
For now I am left in despair, waiting for the third and last part. Let's see how many years from now. You have to hold it. ----------------------------------------------
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[1] A store the size of San Isidro Saga but dedicated exclusively to books, music and games. Just as we hear! It takes more than a day if one wants to visit all, so it is advisable to go with clear ideas and pocket pressed not to die trying. [2] Ruiz Zafon, Carlos, The Angel's Game, Editorial Planeta, 1st Edition, April 2008. [3] Ruiz Zafon, Carlos, The Shadow of the Wind, Editorial Planeta, 1st Edition, April 2002, 62 th Edition, December 2007. Yes, in about five years had more than 60 editions of the same company, as if the only book published. [4] And to think that Lima was announced with great fanfare the publication of a novel by Bryce Echenique, with 5,000 copies of the same company, and that the same managers said they were all at risk!
