"I still remember the day my father took me to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books for the first time." Thus begins Zafón's mysterious novel, set in Barcelona in 1945.

10-year-old Daniel Sampere has discovered a novel, The Shadow of the Wind, by Julián Carax, and, once he reads it, he will begin a search for Carax's other work. But he will find that someone else is also engaged in that search, and is systematically destroying every copy of Carax's books that can be found.

As the years pass, Daniel's life begins to parallel Carax's and intertwine with it, as he unravels a mystery that reaches back to the days before and during the Spanish Civil War, and finds love, friendship and betrayal.