Spanish · 1964–2020
Carlos Ruiz Zafon was a Spanish novelist born in Barcelona in 1964. He worked in advertising before turning to fiction, and he wrote young adult novels such as The Prince of Mist before his breakthrough. The Shadow of the Wind, published in 2001, sold millions of copies and was translated into more than forty languages. It became one of the best-selling Spanish novels of its era. He followed it with The Angel's Game, The Prisoner of Heaven and The Labyrinth of the Spirits, which together form the Cemetery of Forgotten Books cycle. His books mix gothic mystery, romance and a love of reading, and they are set largely in Barcelona under and after Franco's regime. He lived in Los Angeles for many years and kept writing in Spanish. He died of cancer in Los Angeles in 2020, aged 55.