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CARLOS RUIZ Zafón doesn’t look like the kind of guy who loves old books. Clad in an orange and purple rugby shirt and cool-dude glasses, he exudes the kind of easy amiability you’d find at any gathering of the sporting variety, or even in the pub. He certainly seems to be plugged straight into the zeitgeist, for despite being steeped in mists, mystery, melodrama and – yes – old books, his novel The Shadow of the Windhas sold more than 15 million copies worldwide, writes ARMINTA WALLACE
No matter how you count it, that’s two copies for everybody on this island with more than three million left over. How does he do it? He smiles. “I write for people who like to read – and even for people who don’t know that they like to read,” he explains. “Reading is for pleasure. That’s the first stage. You engage people and get them to have fun. Lose themselves in a book. After that, there are many different layers. They may want to get into those layers or not.” Ruiz Zafón is passionate about the pleasures of reading. He is considerably less enthusiastic about the conventions of the publishing business, which have led to The Shadow of the Windbeing billed as “the most successful Spanish novel since Don Quixote”.
