Marina

Marina is a fantasy and sci-fi novel developed in the second half of the twentieth century in the city of Barcelona. This book was written in 1999 by Carlos Ruiz Zafón, the author of The Shadow of the Wind  and The Prince of the Mist, amongst other good books. This story  leads up to Shadow of the Wind.

The book tells the story of Oscar Drai, who returns to his hometown, Barcelona. He tells a story that happened fifteen years ago, in September of 1980, when he discovers that he cannot escape from his past. Oscar is fifteen years old and he lives in a boarding school. There, he explores the surroundings, and decides to enter an abandoned  old house which belonges to Sarriá. There he meets Marina and her father, Germán Blau, a painter and a widower who is very sad about his wife's death. Oscar falls in love with Marina, but their love story has mystery and terror. Oscar, with this family, try to discover the mystery that hides the Velo-Granell, an old orthopedic factory from the 1940s in Barcelona.


The prestigious weekly Der spigel said that Marina was one of the most read books in Germany in 2011.


I found this story intriguing because I never knew how the characters were going to react in  extremely tense situations, in lives they are playing. Moreover, the story seemed to be pretty incredible especially the resurrection of Kolvenik, although the first half of the novel could be true.


I think this book is very good, I like it a lot.. In a scale of 1 to 10, I would rate it a 7.

Carlos Ruíz Zafón

Carlos Ruiz Zafón is a Spanish writer. He was born in 1964 in Barcelona. He is the author of "The Shadow of the Wind", a success of  recent literature. In June 2008, more than ten million copies of this novel were sold all the world.

Carlos studied at the Jesuit college in Sarrià and then he studied journalism. After that, he worked as a creative director for an important agency in Barcelona, but in 1992 he decided to leave his job and start to write books.

His first book was "The Prince of Mist", a fantasy, horror and adventure novel. It won the Juvenile Literature award of Edebé. With the money which he won, he decided to move to Los Angeles in 1994, something that he had wanted to do since he was a child.

The Angel’s Game will be one of our best productions of 2011.
Ruiz Zafon is the only contemporary Spanish author who has reached a megaseller status. A megaseller is a term that classifies the titles that have sold over ten million copies.


Zafón remembers that as a child, he was always writing. "What had always interested me had been language, codes, systems, structures — I had wanted to figure out how these things had worked," he said.  "Just with ink and paper you could create stories and worlds and universes." 



    Carlos Ruíz Zafón.