Carlos Ruiz Zafón
About Author
Carlos Ruiz Zafón was born in Barcelona and is the author of The Shadow of the Wind, his first novel for adults, and the most successful novel in Spanish publishing history after Don Quixote.
The Shadow of the Wind was an international phenomenon in more than 40 countries, read by over 12 million people worldwide with more than a million bought copies in the UK alone: a critical and commercial success.
His work has been translated into more than 35 languages and has received numerous international awards: readers have bought over 15 million copies worldwide.
The Prince of Mist is the first of four novels written long before The Shadow of the Wind, including The Midnight Palace, September Lights and Marina, all of which will be published for the first time in English over the next three years.
Author link
Interview
June 2010
THE PRINCE OF MIST
(Orion Children's Books)
Carlos Ruiz Zafn, author of The Shadow of the Wind, has been revisiting a book he wrote some 20 years ago. It was published in Spanish but has now been translated into English for the first time. The book, Prince of Mist, is published this month by Orion Childrens Books.
Ruiz Zafn visited the UK from his home in Spain during the books launch. He says, I revised the translation and did some changes and got reacquainted with who I was 20 years ago, it was a bit like uncovering a time capsule. While there might be things in the book he doesnt like, he says, I felt it was fresh and it was the novel I wanted to write at the time. I never re-read my work, unless there is a reason for it.
Prince of Mist was his first published novel and set him on the road as a writer, something he had wanted to do since he was six years old. After school, Ruiz Zafn had worked as a journalist before starting to work for a theatre group that produced musicals. I was about 19 years old, I was very young, and then I got a job in advertising, he says. I needed to do something to support myself and there was a lot of money involved in TV commercials. It was the 80s, the age of hyper-capitalism, and he enjoyed it but adds, Since I was a child I had wanted to be in a writer and here I was, making ads for Audi. I was successful but for me it was just a day job.
Aged 24, he quit and started working on a novel which became Prince of Mist. Usually my books start with images, a visual metaphor for something, and I wonder why this image has come to me. Once I figure out what it means, I can begin writing. The image that started Prince of Mist was a garden of statues, mysterious, abandoned, in a forest. Ruiz Zafn says, I started to question why they were there, what they were? I began to visualise this world of a sunken ship, a town on the coast, and Cain in his different incarnations.
Time and choice are pivotal themes in Prince of Mist. Ruiz Zafn says that this interest has sprung from his own life experience. Time has always been important to me I always feel that I am late and all my life I have felt that I should have achieved what I did earlier, he says. I have written a lot about time, especially in my earlier writing, and explored different timelines and the idea of memory and history and choices; the consequences of moral choices, how the actions of the past have consequences and the idea that the sins of the father are visited on the son.
In the Prince of Mist he wanted to explore how people evolve, why we become the people we are. We could have become very different people if we had made different choices in our lives, he explains. We are versions of ourselves but there are very different versions of ourselves that we could have become.
Life is like a game of poker, adds. You havent asked to be there but you find yourself seated at the table. Youre dealt cards, sometimes they are good, sometimes they are bad, and you have to play what you are given. I try to explore this in different ways, going back and forth in time.
Ruiz Zafn constructs a reality from different points of view, from different characters at different points in their life. Its up to you what to interpret of their lives. I try to approach reality not from the perspective of a writer who knows what it all means but to explore how different characters perceive them and how that may be interpreted by the reader.
He shows the grandfather in Prince of Mist towards the end of his life, and regretful of the hand he was dealt. Sometimes you find an old character in my stories, you see them at different times in their lives and see how they become who they are and how that affects people around them. The grandfather in the Prince of Mist tried to do the right thing.
Many of the things that happen in the Prince of Mist change depending on who is telling them. When the grandfather tells the children something, his grandson sees it in a different way from how Max interprets it.
Ruiz Zafn says, I always try to communicate to readers, try to think for yourself, it doesnt matter what its about but listen and make up your mind. If you consider the circus images, it is up to the reader to interpret what that is about.
He has always found the idea of circuses quite creepy so the appearance of the darkest character, Cain, as a clown was perhaps a natural use of imagery for him. I remember as a child seeing people laughing but not finding what happened funny. I felt it was sad for the people and the animals who worked with circuses. I tend to find those forced situations quite sinister and clowns, who put on makeup to make children laugh, can also be sinister figures.
Cain is a shape-changer and is a force, a diabolical force, who doesnt have a specific form. Whatever is going on in your life or your thoughts, he will pick it up, says Ruis Zafn, but he adds, Cain will only become involved in your life if you let him in and whatever he does, he is only acting on peoples actions and choices. People invite him into their lives because they are tempted, but would you be willing to pay the price? You decided whether to open the door to him.
He makes it clear that this is a kind of fable about moral responsibility, that we are responsible for the consequences of our actions. Evil is not a supernatural force but resides within us. It is human nature which is personified in Cain in this story.
He enjoys using classic themes of literature and Faustian tales of human existence and human nature. As a human you have to make decisions and its interesting what you decide to do. Whatever you decide has an impact on someone else. Life is a succession of these instances, he says. You face a challenge and you have to decide what to do, what to be. You will pay a price for that and you sell your soul; we sell our souls a piece at a time in everything we do and we dont like to face that. We create mythologies in which its an external force and objectify evil so that its something outside of ourselves.
The other three stories Ruiz Zafn wrote after Prince of Mist are stand-alone novels with different stories but the author sees them as belonging together. Prince of Mist is followed by The September Lights and then Palace of Midnight, set in Calcutta in the 30s. The fourth is Marina. Orion Children's Books will be publishing each of these during the next three years.
There is a clear evolution in Ruiz Zafns writing from Prince of Mist to The Shadow of the Wind and The Angels Game. Prince of Mist and Shadow of the Wind have a recurrent issue about time, history, who we are and the kind of people we become, he explains. These elements interest me and I see them as the key elements of life we are the people we are and how do we come to be those people?
