The Nature of Things

Hidden amid the back streets of Barcelona is the Cemetery of Lost Books, a repository of out-of-print books that have been salvaged by people who love them. It is there that on a trip with his bookseller father ten-year-old Daniel Sempere discovers a book called The Shadow of the Wind by Julian Carax.  The book is given to him and he reads and rereads it. It thoroughly captures his imagination and he becomes obsessed with the writer. He wants to learn everything about him and to find other books he has written. But as his investigation soon reveals, this may not be possible. It seems that the book that he has is the last surviving copy of that work. Carax's books are being sought out and destroyed by a strange figure who calls himself Lain Coubert. His life's work is to destroy all copies of Carax's books. The really strange thing is that Lain Coubert is the name of one of Carax's characters. In the book, it is the name of the Devil.  Daniel spends the next decade of h...