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OverviewIn May 1980, fifteen-year-old Oscar Drai suddenly vanishes from his boarding school in Barcelona. For seven days and seven nights no one knows his whereabouts. His story begins in an old quarter of the city, where he meets the strange Marina and her father, German Blau, a portrait painter. Marina takes Oscar to a cemetery to watch a macabre ritual that occurs on the last Sunday of each month. At exactly ten o'clock in the morning, a coach pulled by black horses appears. From it descends a woman, her face shrouded be a black velvet cloak. Holding a single rose, she walks to a gravestone that bears no name, only a mysterious emblem of a black butterfly with open wings. When Oscar and Marina decide to follow her, they begin a journey that transports them to a forgotten, postwar Barcelona-a world of aristocrats and actresses, inventors and tycoons-and reveals a dark secret that lies waiting in the mysterious labyrinth beneath the city streets. Written just before The Shadow of the Wind, Carlos Ruiz Zafon's Marina has long been a cult classic in Spain and is now an international bestseller. Full Product DetailsAuthor: Carlos Ruiz Zafon , Lucia Graves , Daniel WeymanPublisher: Hachette Book Group Imprint: Hachette Book Group Edition: Library Edition Dimensions: Width: 17.00cm , Height: 3.00cm , Length: 15.50cm Weight: 0.272kg ISBN: 9781478901730ISBN 10: 147890173 Pages: 6 Publication Date: 22 July 2014 Recommended Age: From 13 to 17 years Audience: Young adult , Teenage / Young adult Format: Audio Publisher's Status: Active Availability: In stock We have confirmation that this item is in stock with the supplier. It will be ordered in for you and dispatched immediately. Table of ContentsReviewsLike Paris in Leroux's The Phantom of the Opera, Ruiz Zafon's Barcelona is a character in its own right, linchpin for this richly atmospheric, genuinely scary tale...High-quality gothic genre fiction with a classic Mary Shelley sensibility. -- Kirkus Reviews Zafon transports readers to 1979 Barcelona, where fifteen-year-old Oscar Drai lives a dreary boarding school life. That's until he meets a girl named Marina, who takes him to an old cemetery where a cloaked woman conducts an odd ritual over a nameless grave...Unlikely discoveries in mysterious, half-ruined mansions alternate with spine-tingling action sequences to create a grotesquerie that will delight horror fans. -- Publishers Weekly From the very first page, this beautifully written work of historical fiction is impossible to put down. With elements of romance, mystery, and horror, none of them overwhelming the other, this complex volume that hints at Mary Shelley's Frankenstein manages to weave together three separate stories for a cohesive and eerie result. -- School Library Journal (starred review) Ruiz Zafon tells his gothic tale with a great deal of exposition interspersed with sudden bursts of action. Weyman handles this expertly, narrating with great emotion, making the many minutes of description interesting to the listener...He also plays around with a wide variety of accents: Spanish, Russian, German, and American characters are all subtly but distinctly portrayed, while narration is performed in dulcet English tones. Many characters are elderly and are given creaky voices that wobble in pitch, but it's never cartoonish. This is a sophisticated performance of an atmospheric, complex mystery. -- Publishers Weekly (starred audio review) Author InformationCarlos Ruiz Zafon is the author of several novels, including the international phenomenon The Shadow of the Wind. His work has been published in more than forty countries, translated into thirty different languages, and honored with numerous international awards, including the Edebe Award, Spain's most prestigious prize for young adult fiction. He divides his time between Barcelona and Los Angeles. Daniel Weyman is an actor and an AudioFile Earphones Award-winning narrator. He has appeared on stage in Sam West's Sheffield Crucible production of As You Like It and the Chichester Festival Theatre's production of David Edgar's The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby. His portrayal of the title character earned him a nomination for Best Performance in a Play at the 2006 TMA Awards. His television appearances include Colditz and the BAFTA-winning BBC drama Dunkirk. In 2010 he played Tom Jackson in his first lead movie role in the film Just Ines. Tab Content 6Author Website:Countries AvailableAll regions |