Man is the only creature who stumbles twice over the same block. If said
creature stumbles 20 times over the same block, then he is a novelist. Case
in point: a friendly reader approaches me and asks, “So when will there be a
new book?”
I say hello and smile. I always hope that my natural charm will disarm the
situation at hello. Something’s wrong with my natural charm, because the act
doesn’t fly any more. I argue then that I am working on something.
“Right. So when is your new book coming out?”
“Soon. Maybe next year.”
“You said that last year.”
“Did I?”
A friendly but insistent smile.
“So when will there be a new book?”
In the past five years I have experienced this scenario hundreds, if not
thousands, of times. Wherever I happened to be, from Australia to Sweden and
a great many places in between, sooner rather than later a reader,
bookseller, editor, agent or colleague would ask me when I was planning to
publish a new novel. And every single time I offered the same lame answer: soon.
From the beginning my plan had been to continue the quartet of novels that had
begun with The Shadow of the Wind by producing a new tale that would
most probably appear two or three years after Shadow. In other words
there has been an embarrassing delay of almost five years, for which I can
offer no excuse except that life, as usual, had other plans. I spent a good
part of those years travelling the world as an ambassador for my books — a
curious occupation that may well build character but does nothing for your
physical or mental health.
Between trips I started working on the new novel — the one that was coming out
soon — maybe three or four times. I wrote the first sections of what was
supposed to be the story of a castle hidden amid the forests outside Berlin,
among woods still haunted by the advance of the Allied troops during the
Second World War, where I was sure you could find corpses, helmets and
buried weapons if you cared to dig. I tore up those pages and rewrote them
about 50 times while I was travelling between Los Angeles, Barcelona,
Houston, Oslo, London, Vienna and Buenos Aires. I learnt a lot from the
whole thing — especially that this was not the way to work on a
novel.
Time raced on like a high-speed train. Months and years passed and I continued
to work on different versions of a story that I would be able to finish, I
told myself quietly, only if I took my foot off the brake, disappeared from
the face of the Earth and worked for at least a year and a half without any
distractions. And, later rather than sooner, that’s precisely what I did.
About three years ago I gathered up all the material I had been producing,
reread it and then destroyed it. Down to the last line.
I decided to start again and challenge the book to a duel from which only one
of us would emerge intact. The little monster stared at me, grinning and
baring its fangs.
“You won’t get out of this one, you fool.”
“We’ll see.”
The Angel’s Game is the second instalment in a quartet of
interrelated novels centred on the Cemetery of Forgotten Books and the
mysterious streets of Barcelona that surround it. The idea of writing four
stories that are at once connected and self-contained occurred to me when I
was starting work on The Shadow of the Wind.
My goal in writing these four books was to create a network of stories spun
around the world of books, language, ideas and the very nature of what
storytelling means for those who practise it and those who savour it. The
books would be a celebration of the act of reading and writing, aiming to
explore the connection made when text and reader meet and there is a spark.
I hoped these novels would be a love letter to literature, devoid of the
silly prejudices or literary snobbery that can sometimes blind us. They
would be stories written for those who love to read, for those who have
forgotten that they love to read and even for those who have yet to discover
that they love to read, of whom there are many. They would be stories filled
with mystery, romance and adventure; stories willing to seduce and induce.
They would be designed to work on many levels at the same time; tales that
would deconstruct and reconstruct genres and styles and blend them into some
new, something exciting, something that would remind you that reading is up
there with sex and chocolate in the list of the Top 10 ways to enjoy your
time on this planet.
So, a very humble declaration of intent. Now, if I could just manage to pull
it off.
In my defence, I would say that in an age of iPods, games consoles and
YouTube, I still believe that nothing can tell a story with the depth and
beauty of a book. I believe that language is the software of our minds, the
blueprint of our identity. Our brains function along narrative structures
and crave stimulation. Among many other things, good literature should
tickle the brain. I try to do that. I try very hard.
The central premise of The Angel’s Game had been doing the rounds
in my mind for a long time, having begun life in a short novel that I wrote
as a kind of experiment between 1990 and 1991, not long before I began what
would become my first published novel, El Principe de la Niebla (The
Prince of Mist).
The experiment taught me a few lessons, not all of them agreeable. I decided
that although this central idea was interesting to me, at that point I
simply didn’t have the experience or the tools to do it justice. As the
years went by the idea lived on and different approaches to it floated
around in my mind, although I never managed to settle on any of them. Then,
when I began The Shadow of the Wind, the idea reared its head again
and that’s when I understood that it had been waiting to find its home in
the universe of the cemetery of forgotten books. For a while I was unsure
whether it would become the next instalment in the quartet or whether I
would leave it for later. One of the things you learn in this business is
that stories choose their own moment.
In The Angel’s Game we encounter some of the figures from The
Shadow of the Wind, as well as new characters who, we gradually realise,
are as important in this mysterious city of books as our old friends Daniel
or Fermin. This time Julian Carax, although seemingly absent, affords us his
penchant for light and shade.
The Angel’s Game is a story of mystery and romance that, like its
predecessor, brings together numerous genres, techniques and registers. It
is again a story about books, about those who make them, those who read them
and those who live for them, through them and even against them. It’s a
story about love, friendship and, at times, the darkness that nests within
us all. Its narrator is David Martin, a young writer who lives in Barcelona
in the 1920s, and who finds himself entangled in a plot involving cursed
books, crimes and secrets that will take him, and the reader, to a place he
could never have predicted. That, at least, is the author’s desire — to make
the reader’s experience an intense one and to invite him or her to join the
game of literature. The Angel’s Game is designed to help the
reader become a participant in the storytelling process.
I’m one of those eccentrics who believes that books speak for themselves, and
if I sat down and tried to tell the reader something about this novel I
would scarcely know where to begin. What I can say is that it’s exactly the
novel I set out to write, and that I think it to be a worthy companion to The
Shadow of the Wind.
I hope that the patience and goodwill of all those readers who have been
waiting for it will be rewarded. I know that some of them will be surprised.
Some may even be upset. Since the novel originally came out in Spain I’ve
been joking that if Shadow is the good girl in the family, The
Angel’s Game is the wicked stepsister. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
In The Shadow of the Wind, the bookseller Sempere reminds us that every
book has soul: the soul of its author and of those who read it and dream
with it. The Angel’s Game has soul, and sweat and tears. At the
moment they’re all mine, but, with any luck, soon they will be shared by
those who decide to venture into its pages.
And, after this, when will there be another book, the astute reader might ask.
“Soon,” I tell myself. “Soon.”
Translated from the Spanish by Andrew Staffell. The Angel’s Game
by Carlos Ruiz Zafón is published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson on June
1 at £18.99. To buy it for £17.09 including p&p call 0845
2712134 or visit timesonline.co.uk/booksfirst
Carlos Ruiz Zafón will discuss his new novel, The Angel’s Game, at the
Bloomsbury Theatre, London WC1, on Monday, June 1, from 7pm. Tickets £5,
from Waterstone’s Gower Street (e-mail events@ gowerst.waterstones.com or
call 020-7636 1577).
We have 25 tickets to give away. E-mail bookscomp@ thetimes.co.uk with the
answer to the following question: What is the name of the bookshop in The
Shadow of the Wind? Put Zafón in the subject line, and include your name,
address and phone number. The first 25 correct entries drawn will win. One
entry per person. Entries must be received by 10am, Tuesday, May 26.
