The Angel’s Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Even with the well-publicized problems of the industry, something like two million books get published each year in the world, with somewhere in the vicinity of 170,000 being released annually in the United States. Of those, a mere two to three percent are books translated from another language. And though non-fiction dominates the U.S. market, the vast majority of translated works are fiction. France and Germany subsidize translations, which may explain why they lead the way in U.S. market releases, followed by titles that originally appeared in Spanish, Italian and Japanese. All of which is to say, it is a rare title that makes its way here in English, and KMUW?s book critic Sarah Bagby is here to tell us about a new one from a Spanish author whose previous novel sold millions of copies around the world, appearing in 45 countries and 30 different languages. You can hear Sarah Bagby's book reviews the second and fourth Mondays of every month on Morning Edition and find them posted here with additional information.

Read an interview with Carlos Ruiz Zafon about his previous best-selling novel, The Shadow of the Wind, and link to a tour of places in Barcelona touched on in that book: http://www.threemonkeysonline.com/als/carlos_ruiz_zafon_shadow_of_the_wind.html