The City of Mist - by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Book Synopsis

"Ruiz Zafón's visionary storytelling prowess is a genre unto itself."--USA Today

Return to the mythical Barcelona library known as the Cemetery of Forgotten Books in this posthumous collection of stories from the New York Times bestselling author of The Shadow of the Wind and The Labyrinth of the Spirits.

Bestselling author Carlos Ruiz Zafón conceived of this collection of stories as an appreciation to the countless readers who joined him on the extraordinary journey that began with The Shadow of the Wind. Comprising eleven stories, most of them never before published in English, The City of Mist offers the reader compelling characters, unique situations, and a gothic atmosphere reminiscent of his beloved Cemetery of Forgotten Books quartet.

The stories are mysterious, imbued with a sense of menace, and told with the warmth, wit, and humor of Zafón's inimitable voice. A boy decides to become a writer when he discovers that his creative gifts capture the attentions of an aloof young beauty who has stolen his heart. A labyrinth maker flees Constantinople to a plague-ridden Barcelona, with plans for building a library impervious to the destruction of time. A strange gentleman tempts Cervantes to write a book like no other, each page of which could prolong the life of the woman he loves. And a brilliant Catalan architect named Antoni Gaudí reluctantly agrees to cross the ocean to New York, a voyage that will determine the fate of an unfinished masterpiece.

Imaginative and beguiling, these and other stories in The City of Mist summon up the mesmerizing magic of their brilliant creator and invite us to come dream along with him.

Review Quotes

"Carlos Ruiz Zafón was a brilliant writer...This book shows us just how talented he was...There is much to savor in The City of Mist, and I am thankful that Ruiz Zafón provides us a literary beacon through the mist that has been the past two years." - Book Reporter
"Imaginative and beguiling storytelling...These stories summon up the mesmerizing magic of their brilliant creator." - Book Riot
"Mesmerizing...Absorbing, old-fashioned storytelling from an indisputable master of the form, atmospheric settings and characters who exist in the margins between reality and imagination...tapping into a sense of ethereal mystery and otherworldliness." - BookPage
"Evocative...Absorbing...These eleven tales continue in the gothic vein of The Cemetery of Forgotten Books." - Times Literary Supplement (London)
"Ruiz Zafón, the best-selling Spanish author since Cervantes and a conjurer of wonder and mystery...brings to life his hometown Barcelona, that magical and mysterious city, in a collection that is both familiarly satisfying and poignant, revisiting many of his signature themes such as desperate youthful love and its consequences, as well as class prejudice." - Washington Post
"A colossal achievement . . . a genre-crossing delight. . . . His trick is to have linked multiple genres--fantasy, historical, romance, meta-fictional, police-procedural and political - through prose of atmospheric specificity." - The Guardian on The Labyrinth of the Spirits
"A wild ride that executes hairpin bends with breathtaking lurches." - New York Times Book Review on The Prisoner of Heaven