The Angel’s Game

by: Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Published by: Doubleday

Reviewed by Lauren Segelbaum

Carlos Ruiz Zafon is a Spanish novelist who has lived in America since the early ”˜90s. In 2001 he published Shadow of the Wind, his first adult fiction novel that sold millions of copies worldwide and won numerous international awards. The Angel’s Game is the prequel to Shadow of the Wind. However, if you haven’t read Shadow, don’t let it stop you from picking up The Angel’s Game. If you have read his first novel, welcome back to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books.

The Angel’s Game is set in Barcelona in the 1920s. The novel centers on David Martin, a young writer who started his career working in a newspaper office. His first short story for the newspaper becomes a huge success. David then ghostwrites a book to help out a friend, and then one under his own name. The first gains tremendous recognition; the other doesn’t.

David is then commissioned by a mysterious French editor to write a book that will potentially change their lives. At this point in the story the mystery unravels and the love story begins. David is accused of numerous crimes, the same time struggling with an impossible love. Many characters play a part in the intrigue, and at times it was hard to keep them all straight. Zafon paints a picture of his hometown Barcelona that is mysterious and gothic. The story he tells let us in to the underworld of Barcelona.
Because I read his first novel many years ago, it wasn’t until the very end did I understand how this was the prequel to Shadow of the Wind.

In an interview, Carlos Ruiz Zafon says The Angel’s Game has many games inside, one of them is with the reader. It is a book designed to make you step into the storytelling process and become a part of it. In other words, the wicked, gothic chick wants your blood.”

My suggestion to readers of Zafon’s new novel: Take it slow, pay attention, and enjoy.

Armchair Interviews agrees.