The Angel's Game

Barcelona, the 1920s. David Martín, a young reporter, makes a living writing pulp crime serials under a pen name and moves into an abandoned mansion. Cristina, the woman he loves, marries his patron, Pedro Vidal, and David learns he has a terminal illness. Publisher Andreas Corelli offers him a fortune, and a cure, in exchange for a book that could found a new religion. As he writes, with young Isabella as his assistant, David finds out that the house's former owner, Diego Marlasca, wrote a book for Corelli and vanished under strange circumstances. Inspector Víctor Grandes starts to suspect him. In the end, David loses Cristina and flees Barcelona, and Isabella marries bookseller Sempere's son. In the epilogue, Corelli returns with an impossible gift.

1. Behind the scenesA record print run

   The planned first print run was one million copies, a record in Spanish publishing. It hit stores on April 17, 2008.

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2. Behind the scenesSeven years later

   It came out seven years after The Shadow of the Wind. Lucia Graves translated it into English again, in 2009.

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3. ReferenceThe same bookshop

   The Sempere & Sons bookshop in the Raval and the Cemetery of Forgotten Books are back here, decades before The Shadow of the Wind.

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4. SetupThe angel pin

   Corelli always wears a silver pin shaped like an angel with open wings. Watch where that angel turns up.

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5. SetupThe assistant

   Isabella, the girl who insists on becoming David's assistant, is the link between this book and The Shadow of the Wind.

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