The Labyrinth of the Spirits
The Labyrinth of the Spirits spans the years from 1938―when the Nacionales bombed Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War―to 1992. The driving force of the novel is Alicia Gris, who lost her parents during the bombing and still carries the emotional and physical scars twenty years later. But these scars make her fearless. As a secret service investigator, Alicia is tasked with the disappearance of the high-powered Minister of Culture, Mauricio Valls. Her only clue is a rare book found in his office that leads her back to Barcelona and to the Montjuïc prison that Valls ran. As she investigates, she begins to peel back layers of crimes, conspiracies and atrocities committed by Valls and other officials during the Franco regime.
The Labyrinth of the Spirits is a compelling, multi-faceted, and haunting work of art told by a master storyteller. To say that the writing is brilliant is an understatement. Carlos Ruiz Zafón respects every word, taking his time to develop and do justice to major, minor and irrelevant characters, places, things, or situations in order to recreate a dark time in Spain’s history and ensure that the reader not only bears witness to it but is immersed in it and feels it. It is also a complex novel. Alicia’s investigation is the thread that holds the novel together, but there are multiple story lines and characters, including those from previous volumes of the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, all of which feed into Valls.
The Labyrinth of the Spirits is an epic novel of a brutal period in Spain’s history, but it is also an ode to writing and to the undying thirst for knowledge through reading. It is therefore fitting that the novel concludes in 1992, when the story lines are brought to a head and the atrocities are brought to light in newspapers.
