“And as he watched them walk out of the orphanage, Thomas Carter would think of their lives as the blank pages of a book in which he had written the initial chapters of a story he would never be allowed to finish.”

Spanish novelist and screenwriter of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, he crafted atmospheric, gothic-inflected stories blending mystery and melancholy. His most famous work, *The Shadow of the Wind*, became a global sensation for its layered narrative and haunting atmosphere.