Carlos Zafón: Rose of Fire

That night Raimundo de Sempere managed to escape from his cell and return to his home to discover that his family and his book-printing workshop had survived the catastrophe. At dawn, the printer approached the Sea Wall. Debris from the shipwreck that had brought Edmond de Luna to Barcelona swayed on the water. The sea had begun to break up the hull and Sempere was able to enter it, as one would enter a house with a wall removed. Walking through the bowels of the ship in the ghostly light of dawn, the printer at last found what he was looking for. Saltpetre had partly erased the outlines, but the plans for the great labyrinth of books were still intact, just as Edmund de Luna had conceived it. Sempere sat on the sand and unfolded the plans. His mind could not encompass the complexity and the arithmetic that held that marvel together, but he told himself that there would be other illustrious minds capable of understanding its secrets. Until then, until the time when other men wiser than him found the means of saving the labyrinth and recalling the price exacted by the beast, he would keep the plans in the family chest where some day, he had no doubt, it would find the maker of labyrinths worthy of such a challenge.

Carlos Ruiz Zafón, the author of two critically acclaimed and internationally bestselling novels, The Shadow of the Wind and The Angel’s Game , is one of the world’s most read and best-loved writers. His work, which also includes prizewinning young adult novels, has been translated into more than fifty languages and published around the world, garnering numerous international prizes and reaching millions of readers. He divides his time between Barcelona and Los Angeles.

[1] And so, when 23 April came round, the prisoners in the block turned to David Martín, who lay in the shadows of his cell with his eyes closed, and begged him to tell them a story with which to alleviate their tedium. ‘I’ll tell you a story,’ he replied. ‘A story about books, dragons and roses, as befits the date, [1] but above all, a story about shadows and ashes, as befits the times…’ (from the lost fragments of The Prisoner of Heaven ) 23 April, St. George’s day (World Book Day) is celebrated in Catalonia with gifts of roses and books.