Explore "The Shadow of the Wind" by Carlos Ruiz Zafón on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
THAT YEAR AUTUMN BLANKETED BARCELONA WITH FALLEN LEAVES that rippled through the streets like silvery scales. The distant memory of the night of my sixteenth birthday had put a damper on my spirits, or perhaps life had decided to grant me a sabbatical from my melodramatic woes so that I could begin to grow up. I was surprised at how little I thought about Clara Barceló, or Julián Carax, or that faceless cipher who smelled of burned paper and claimed to be a character straight out of a book. By November, I had observed a month of sobriety, a month without going anywhere near Plaza Real to beg a glimpse of Clara through the window. The merit, I must confess, was not altogether mine. Business in the bookshop was picking up, and my father and I had more on our hands than we could juggle.
"At this rate we'll have to hire another person to help us find the orders," my father remarked. "What we'd really need is someone very special, half detective, half poet, someone who won't charge much or be afraid to tackle the impossible."