The Angel’s Game

　　★孤單熬了7年，《風之影》作者薩豐終於交出這張全球翹首等待的成績單！
　　★為什麼全球出版社爭相付出高價，只為獲得薩豐腦海裡的一個故事？
　　★西班牙首刷100萬本，破出版史紀錄，全球銷量衝向500萬本！
　　★德英美等國以天價勇奪這顆「出版界的鑽石」，全球預付金已登千萬美元高峰。
　　
　　當全世界都背棄、不看好你，只有惡魔對你展露笑顏，你選擇言聽計從？抑或誓死周旋到底？

　　誘惑宛如天使，卻是披著純淨白衣的魔鬼。當鬼魅逐漸顯影時，這才驚覺，最險惡的魔鬼都住在自己心裡：虛榮、仇恨、妒忌、自卑......在這場遊戲中，敵手只有自己。──范湲

　　8歲那年，大衛．馬汀在酒醉父親的拳頭下，誓死守護狄更斯的《前程遠大》，因為在那遭受詛咒的童年時光裡，書本是唯一可依靠的心靈堡壘。

　　1917年，年僅17歲的馬汀意外接獲《工業之聲》副總編巴希里歐的緊急命令──即將付印的週末特刊因臨時出狀況，空缺幾頁內容待補，此時編輯部人員又都已下班，無可奈何之下，副總編給了馬汀一個創作機會，要求他在僅剩的六小時內寫個短篇小說以充版面。

　　隔天馬汀所寫的小說一刊出後，竟大受讀者歡迎，使他一躍成為報社專欄作家之一，卻也因此招來報社同儕的嫉妒與冷落，只有一向看好他的忘年之交衛達始終默默給予支持和鼓勵。

　　正當馬汀的小說廣受好評之際，卻收到一位來自法國巴黎出版商的來信，表示願意協助他完成種種創作及出書的夢想；接著又意外獲得一封造訪妓院「綺夢園」的邀請函，只是根據衛達所言，這家「綺夢園」早已歇業多年，也無聽說重新開業的消息；更詭異的是，當馬汀前往赴約時，接待他的美麗女子竟與自己小說中的女主角同名，也叫珂蘿依......一夜逼真如實的經歷，之後卻又人去樓空？！

　　爾後，一封封具有天使印記的信箋，一次次與署名A.C.的神秘訪客會晤，竟鬼使神差地引誘著馬汀，身不由主陷入一場越探索越迷離、無法自拔的生命歷程，馬汀也逐漸發現與自己接觸的神秘人士，其身分與背後目的遠比想像中詭譎難測......

　　美麗誘人的天使封印，就此揭開一場天人交戰的神秘交易。當你驚覺自己的靈魂已被獵捕、生命正與過往歷史詭異交疊時，可有勇氣繼續未完成的章節？

　　From master storyteller Carlos Ruiz Zafon, author of the international phenomenon The Shadow of the Wind, comes The Angel’s Game — a dazzling new page-turner about the perilous nature of obsession, in literature and in love.

　　The whole of Barcelona stretched out at my feet and I wanted to believe that when I opened those windows — my new windows — each evening its streets would whisper stories to me, secrets in my ear, that I could catch on paper and narrate to whomever cared to listen…

　　In an abandoned mansion at the heart of Barcelona, a young man, David Martin, makes his living by writing sensationalist novels under a pseudonym. The survivor of a troubled childhood, he has taken refuge in the world of books and spends his nights spinning baroque tales about the city’s underworld. But perhaps his dark imaginings are not as strange as they seem, for in a locked room deep within the house lie photographs and letters hinting at the mysterious death of the previous owner.

　　Like a slow poison, the history of the place seeps into his bones as he struggles with an impossible love. Close to despair, David receives a letter from a reclusive French editor, Andreas Corelli, who makes him the offer of a lifetime. He is to write a book unlike anything that has ever existed — a book with the power to change hearts and minds. In return, he will receive a fortune, and perhaps more. But as David begins the work, he realizes that there is a connection between his haunting book and the shadows that surround his home.

　　Once again, Zafon takes us into a dark, gothic universe first seen in The Shadow of the Wind and creates a breathtaking adventure of intrigue, romance, and tragedy. Through a dizzyingly constructed labyrinth of secrets, the magic of books, passion, and friendship blend into a masterful story.

　　★本書原文書名為: EL JUEGO DEL ANGEL
　　★本書中譯版《天使遊戲》由圓神出版。

作者簡介

卡洛斯．魯依斯．薩豐　Carlos Ruiz Zafon

　　1964年生於巴塞隆納，原任職於廣告界，後赴美定居，目前在洛杉磯從事電影編劇以及文學創作。

　　1993年出版小說處女作《白雪王子》，榮獲西班牙重要的「艾德彼兒童文學獎」肯定，接下來幾部作品如《午夜皇宮》《九月之光》和《瑪麗娜》等，都是極受好評的青少年小說。

　　2001年出版《風之影》，隨即席捲西班牙書市，熱潮不退，銷售逾百萬冊，並高居各國暢銷書排行榜，魅力遠勝《哈利波特》和《達文西密碼》。2004年，《風之影》先獲西班牙出版協會選為該年度最暢銷小說，後在法國獲頒「年度最佳外國小說」，曾獲此殊榮的西語文學巨擘僅有馬奎斯和瓦加斯略薩。德文版出版一個月即熱賣十萬冊；英文版在英國成為有史以來第一本登上暢銷榜冠軍的西班牙小說，並榮登美國紐約時報暢銷書排行榜；已譯成多種語言在全球逾五十國出版。

　　《天使遊戲》是作者薩豐醞釀7年的聲勢鉅著，在西班牙以首刷100萬本之姿堂堂登場，迅速銷售一空，且不斷好評再版中。薩豐說：「這個故事裡有陰謀，有愛情，更穿插了許多驚喜。在書寫《天使遊戲》的時候我比較勇敢，這本書很有些狄更斯的味道，是向以狂熱方式在文學中生活的十九世紀作家致敬。」

　　CARLOS RUIZ ZAFON, author of The Shadow of the Wind and other novels, is one of the world’s most read and best-loved writers. His work has been translated into more than forty languages and published around the world, garnering numerous international prizes and reaching millions of readers. He divides his time between Barcelona and Los Angeles.

A writer never forgets the first time he accepted a few coins or a word of praise in exchange for a story. He will never forget the sweet poison of vanity in his blood and the belief that, if he succeeds in not letting any one discover his lack of talent, the dream of literature will provide him with a roof over his head, a hot meal at the end of the day, and what he covets the most: his name printed on a miserable piece of paper that surely will outlive him. A writer is condemned to remember that mo ment, because from then on he is doomed and his soul has a price.

My first time came one faraway day in December 1917. I was seventeen and worked at The Voice of Industry, a newspaper that had seen bet ter days and now languished in a barn of a building that had once housed a sulfuric acid factory. The walls still oozed the corrosive vapor that ate away at furniture and clothes, sapping the spirits, consuming even the soles of shoes. The newspaper’s headquarters rose behind the forest of an gels and crosses of the Pueblo Nuevo cemetery; from afar, its outline merged with the mausoleums silhouetted against the horizon–a skyline stabbed by hundreds of chimneys and factories that wove a perpetual twilight of scarlet and black above Barcelona.

On the night that was about to change the course of my life, the newspaper’s deputy editor, Don Basilio Moragas, saw fit to summon me, just before closing time, to the dark cubicle at the far end of the editorial staff room that doubled as his office and cigar den. Don Basilio was a forbidding- looking man with a bushy moustache who did not suffer fools and who subscribed to the theory that the liberal use of adverbs and adjectives was the mark of a pervert or someone with a vitamin deficiency. Any journalist prone to florid prose would be sent off to write fu-neral notices for three weeks. If, after this penance, the culprit relapsed, Don Basilio would ship him off permanently to the ”House and Home” pages. We were all terrified of him, and he knew it.

”Did you call me, Don Basilio?” I ventured timidly.

The deputy editor looked at me askance. I entered the office, which smelled of sweat and tobacco in that order. Ignoring my presence, Don Basilio continued to read through one of the articles lying on his table, a red pencil in hand. For a couple of minutes, he machine- gunned the text with corrections and amputations, muttering sharp comments as if I weren’t there. Not knowing what to do, and noticing a chair placed against the wall, I slid toward it.

”Who said you could sit down?” muttered Don Basilio without raising his eyes from the text.
I quickly stood up and held my breath. The deputy editor sighed, let his red pencil fall, and leaned back in his armchair, eyeing me as if I were some useless piece of junk.

”I’ve been told that you write, Martin.”

I gulped. When I opened my mouth only a ridiculous, reedy voice emerged.

”A little, well, I don’t know, I mean, yes, I do write...”

”I hope you write better than you speak. And what do you write– if that’s not too much to ask?”

”Crime stories. I mean...”

”I get the idea.”

The look Don Basilio gave me was priceless. If I’d said I devoted my time to sculpting figures for Nativity scenes out of fresh dung I would have drawn three times as much enthusiasm from him. He sighed again and shrugged his shoulders.

”Vidal says you’re not altogether bad. He says you stand out.”

”Of course, with the sort of competition in this neck of the woods, one doesn’t have to run very fast. Still, if Vidal says so.”

Pedro Vidal was the star writer at The Voice of Industry. He penned a weekly column on crime and lurid events–the only thing worth read ing in the whole paper. He was also the author of a dozen modestly successful thrillers about gangsters in the Raval quarter carrying out bedroom intrigues with ladies of high society. Invariably dressed in im peccable silk suits and shiny Italian moccasins, Vidal had the looks and the manner of a matinee idol: fair hair always well combed, a pencil moustache, and the easy, generous smile of someone who feels comfortable in his own skin and at ease with the world. He belonged to a family whose forebears had made their pile in the Americas in the sugar business and, on their return to Barcelona, had bitten off a large chunk of the city’s electricity grid. His father, the patriarch of the clan, was one of the newspaper’s main shareholders, and Don Pedro used its offices as a playground to kill the tedium of never having worked out of necessity a single day in his life. It mattered little to him that the newspaper was losing money as quickly as the new automobiles that were beginning to circulate around Barcelona leaked oil: with its abundance of nobility, the Vidal dynasty was now busy collecting banks and plots of land the size of small principalities in the new part of town known as the Ensanche.