Interesting that since I'm helping Mariann with interviews on the Civil War, the Transition and the so-called 'Pacto de Olvido', (especially the cultural one proposed by Semprun and Paz), I've had my eyes open for novels exploring those periods.

Yet I wonder whether there are even fewer novels that take as their terrain the cultural desert of Franco's regime. La Sombra del Viento spans from 1945 to 55, under the grey reality of the dictatorship. They truly seem to be 'dias de ceniza', and Barcelona is a city continually damped down by clouds and rain. Ruiz Zafón's writing is superb. His prose is intensely rich yet easily readable.

His characters bear the physical or psychological scars of the Civil War, or else are suspiciously immune - such as Barceló: even while Clara's father dies in the dungeons on Montjuic, his fortune survives the turmoils of war and conquest intact. Others are not so lucky, like the pathetic Fermín.

Anyway, these are first impressions. I'm only a quarter of the way through the book. To be continued...