There was no special fanfare when Spanish publisher, Planeta, published Carlos Ruiz Zafón's fifth book (but his first for adults) The Shadow of the Wind, in 2002.  However, it  took off, spending more than 60 weeks on the bestseller lists in Spain, and has now been translated into 20 languages.  Zafón says that the young adult novel was 'never my natural genre' (as far as I can see, none of his earlier works are available in English).

The paradox of The Shadow of the Wind, according to Ruiz Zafón, is that it could only have been written in Los Angeles, his home for the past 10 years. He says "I thought it would be a place that would allow me to keep working," but "it turned out to be a place that I found quite ...