Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Carlos Ruiz Zafón was a Spanish novelist whose Gothic, atmospheric fiction made him one of the bestselling Spanish-language authors of all time. Born in Barcelona in 1964, he studied journalism and worked in advertising before moving to Los Angeles, where he wrote screenplays and novels. He began writing young adult fiction before turning to adult novels. Zafón's masterwork is the Cemetery of Forgotten Books quartet: The Shadow of the Wind, The Angel's Game, The Prisoner of Heaven, and The Labyrinth of the Spirits. The Angel's Game is the second in the sequence, following a pulp fiction writer in 1920s Barcelona who is commissioned by a mysterious publisher to write a book that will change the world — a commission with sinister consequences. The quartet is set in and around a secret labyrinthine library in Barcelona, and the series combines Gothic atmosphere, literary mystery, and a love letter to books and reading. Zafón died in 2020 at the age of fifty-five. His audiobooks and books offer listeners and readers atmospheric, seductive fiction that celebrates the dangerous power of stories — Gothic mysteries set in a Barcelona that is as dark and beautiful as a dream.