Carlos Ruiz Zafón

Carlos Ruiz Zafón (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈkaɾlos rwiθ θaˈfon]; 25 September 1964 – 19 June 2020) was a Spanish novelist known for his 2001 novel La sombra del viento (The Shadow of the Wind). The novel sold 15 million copies and was winner of numerous awards; it was included in the list of the one hundred best books in Spanish in the last twenty-five years, made in 2007 by eighty-one Latin American and Spanish writers and critics.

Biography

Ruiz Zafón was born in Barcelona. His grandparents had worked in a factory and his father sold insurance. Ruiz Zafón began his working life in advertising. In the 1990s he moved to Los Angeles where he worked briefly in screen writing. He was fluent in English.

Ruiz Zafón died of colorectal cancer in Los Angeles on 19 June 2020.

Literary career

Ruiz Zafón's first novel, El príncipe de la niebla 1993 (The Prince of Mist, published in English in 2010), earned the Edebé literary prize for young adult fiction. He was also the author of three additional young adult novels, El palacio de la medianoche (1994), Las luces de septiembre (1995) and Marina (1999).

In 2001 he published his first adult novel La sombra del viento (The Shadow of the Wind, Lucia Graves' English translation published in 2004), a Gothic mystery that involves Daniel Sempere's quest to track down the man responsible for destroying every book written by author Julian Carax. The novel has sold millions of copies worldwide, with more than a million copies sold in the UK. La sombra del viento garnered critical acclaim around the world.