The Shadow of the Wind: The Cemetery of Forgotten Books Summary & Analysis

The novel opens in Barcelona in 1945, as Daniel Sempere walks with his father to the mysterious Cemetery of Forgotten Books for the first time. Mr. Sempere warns Daniel never to speak to anyone of what he will see inside. When Daniel asks if he can tell his mother, Mr. Sempere says sadly that “we keep no secrets from her.” This is because Daniel’s mother died in a cholera epidemic just after the end of the Spanish Civil War.

Mr. Sempere owns a bookshop he inherited from his father. He and Daniel live over the bookshop in a small apartment which Daniel feels is still permeated by the sadness of his mother’s death. Daniel says he spent his entire childhood making “invisible friends” among the characters in old books. He also treats his dead mother like an invisible friend, talking out loud to her before he falls asleep.

On the morning in question, Daniel wakes up at dawn “screaming” because he can no longer remember his mother’s face. After comforting him, Mr. Sempere says he has something to show him and leads him through the sleepy city streets. Stopping at a large, forbidding door, Mr. Sempere knocks until a small man named Isaac answers. Mr. Sempere introduces Daniel as his son and the future inheritor of his bookshop.

Daniel discovers that within the building is a round hall and myriad labyrinthine passages, all crammed with books. Browsing through them are several men Daniel recognizes as other booksellers and colleagues of his father. Mr. Sempere tells Daniel that “every volume you see here has a soul” and preserves the thoughts and feelings both of the author and those who read it. He says no one knows exactly how the Cemetery originated, but the men who know its secret now make sure that books without a home or at risk of fading into oblivion are stored here, waiting to be appreciated by new readers.

Daniel is awed and amazed. Best of all, to commemorate his first visit to the cemetery, he gets to choose a book to take home with him. As he walks deliberately through the passageways, he muses that each book contains a “boundless universe” that is infinitely more expansive than the worlds of people, who while away the time in “football and radio soaps.”

At that moment, drawn by “chance, or its more flamboyant relative, destiny,” Daniel notices an unfamiliar title called The Shadow of the Wind, by Julián Carax. He selects this book and leaves the cemetery, feeling that the book has been waiting for him since before he was born.

Back in their apartment, Daniel begins reading The Shadow of the Wind and is immediately hooked. The novel is about a man searching for his biological father, whose identity his mother divulges only as she is dying. The protagonist is also haunted by his “lost youth” and the “shadow of a cursed love.” The novel is especially interesting because it’s composed of various nested narratives, the literary equivalent of “Russian dolls.” Daniel stays up all night reading.

Daniel recalls a customer remarking that nothing is more influential to a reader than “the first book that finds its way into his heart.” Daniel believes this is true, and that the “enchanted” themes and images he first encounters in Carax’s novel accompany him through the rest of his life.