7/8/2023 0 Comments The prisoner of heaven book![]() ![]() The most vividly lovable person here is Fermín, a master of comically flowery rhetoric, who claims that "obstetrics, after free verse, is one of my hobbies". The evil prison governor, whose eyes are "blue, penetrating and sharp, alive with greed and suspicion", is a movie-villain cliché, but cliché is sometimes just what is needed to maintain the blissful narrative drive of a high-class mystery. ![]() Scene-setting is crisp, and minor characters expertly sketched: a priest with "the manners of a retired boxer", or a scrivener who guarantees the effects of his erotic love poetry. Melodrama succeeds when there is no embarrassment in its execution, and Zafón is a splendidly solicitous craftsman, careful to give the reader at least as much pleasure as he is evidently having. ![]() Set in a prison castle after the victory of Franco in the civil war, with an ambience of lice, cold and summary executions, it features a novelist, imprisoned and denounced as "the worst writer in the world", who is blackmailed into polishing the prison governor's own execrable literary efforts. As with The Shadow of the Wind, there is a historical story within the story. ![]()
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