Pip goes to Catalonia
Giles Tremlett on a Catalan prequel
Giles Tremlett
Saturday 13 June 2009
T
he identity of Carlos Ruiz Zafón's literary hero soon becomes crystal clear in The Angel's Game, a Gothic prequel to his immensely successful The Shadow of the Wind. The breeze from Charles Dickens and his Great Expectations blows through this novel from the start, as a hero who starts off as a Catalan version of Dickens's hard-done-by young Pip looks set for both greater things and troubled times. There are other winks at Great Expectations, which soon gets name-checked and finally appears as a gift to the young hero that causes him to be beaten black and blue by his father - a lost, violent, book-hating soul from the putrid underworld of early 20th century Barcelona.
