The City of Mist

Description

A return to the mythical Barcelona library, the Cemetery of Forgotten Books. This posthumous collection from Carlos Ruiz Zafon, the New York Times bestselling author of The Shadow of the Wind comprises eleven stories, most never before published in English. The City of Mist is Ruiz Zafon's tribute to the countless thousands of readers who joined him on the extraordinary journey through the mysterious gothic world of his beloved Cemetery of Forgotten Books quartet. A boy decides to become a writer when he discovers that his creative gifts capture the attentions of an aloof young beauty who has stolen his heart. A labyrinth-maker flees Constantinople to a plague-ridden Barcelona, with plans for building a library impervious to the destruction of time. A strange gentleman tempts Cervantes to write a book like no other, each page of which could prolong the life of the woman he loves. And a brilliant Catalan architect named Antoni Gaudi reluctantly agrees to cross the ocean to New York, a voyage that will determine the fate of an unfinished masterpiece. Imaginative and beguiling, these and other stories in The City of Mist bring to life the mesmerising magic of their brilliant creator and invite us to enter the dream along with him.

Carlos Ruiz Zafon (1964-2020) was the author of eight novels, including the internationally bestselling and critically acclaimed Cemetery of Forgotten Books quartet: The Shadow of the Wind, The Angel's Game, The Prisoner of Heaven and The Labyrinth of the Spirits. His work, which also includes prizewinning young-adult novels, has been translated into more than fifty languages and published across the globe, garnering numerous awards and reaching millions of readers.

'Ruiz Zafon's visionary storytelling prowess is a genre unto itself.' * USA Today * 'This short story collection is a posthumous parting gift from Ruiz Zafon to his millions of fans. The whole point of his oeuvre, so perfectly realised in his Cemetery of Forgotten Books series, is that he thickly layers gothic Barcelona detail on to tragic, romantic and mysterious narratives...With much-loved places and characters from that series making fleeting reappearances, it's a fitting coda to his life and world.' * Observer * 'The players on Zafon's stage are driven by lonely aspirations, audacious ideas, spontaneous acts of self-sacrifice and heroism, along with enough Machiavellian mischief to thread a tapestry of human frailties and failings to span several centuries...Vale Carlos Ruiz Zafon.' * Ian McFarlane, Canberra Times * 'The last work of the outstanding Spanish writer Carlos Ruiz Zafon...There is a melancholy to all of these [stories] that only adds to the sadness that Zafon did not have the chance to develop any of them into novels. But what is contained here is more than worth the price of admission.' * SA Weekend *