The City of Mist: Stories

Intricately detailed and gorgeously patterned with a sense of overlap in several pieces, The City of Mist–the latest short story collection from Carlo Ruis Zafon, famed author of Shadow of the Wind—is darkly hopeful.

These eleven short stories, read separately, offer glimpses into the lives of characters filled with heartbreak and regret. Read together, the book is a meditation on all the small moments upon which a life can turn. A poor boy meets a wealthy little girl and shares afternoons with her in a church as her maid attends confession in the opening story “Blanca and the Departure.” Their loyalty to one another, and his pain when she is ripped away from him, echo throughout the other pieces in the book. One of the shorter pieces, “A Christmas Tale,” recounts a horrifying legend about a soul-stealing lawyer who dies gruesomely. While the prose is dark and twisted, there is brilliance and empathy in each of these stories. Zafon seems to be suggesting that we are all flawed and capable of terrible things, but there is redemption in one another.

Fans of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Isabella Allende will absolutely love this book.