THERE are a few rules about bestsellers, in general; or at least rules about what bestsellers aren’t meant to be.

They are not meant to be “literary”. They are not meant to be books in translation (the British are famously shy of reading books by foreigners).

They are not meant to be metafictions: books about books. But The Shadow of the Wind, Carlos Ruiz Zafón’s novel — translated from the Spanish by Lucia Graves and set in post-civil war Barcelona — now finds itself at No 3 in the overall bestseller charts.

As Scott Pack, buyer for Waterstone’s, explained: “Everyone is saying how difficult it is to sell literary books, and debut works and anything in translation. What more could you do to convince the great British public not to buy it? But it’s the best book I’ve read in years.”

At the novel’s opening, 10-year-old Daniel uncovers the eponymous book in the mysterious “Cemetery of Forgotten Books” where his father takes him. As he grows up he is pursued by the mystery of The Shadow of the Wind and its elusive author.

How do such things happen? The good news is: good books sell. Zafón’s novel already had the momentum of that beast stalked by every publisher, the word-of-mouth bestseller.

It’s fair to say that advertising and hype can push a book so far: but what really gets books in the charts (and crucially, staying there) is when you tell me that I must read this book.

That’s what creates the phenomenon of a Longitude, a Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, a Harry Potter (in his youth, needless to say; now the hype has taken over there).

Kirsty Dunseath, editorial director at Phoenix, the book’s British publisher, read it in Spanish and bought it immediately. “It’s what you hope for as an editor,” she says. “It’s got everything you want. It’s got a really strong plot, it’s commercial, but it’s also literary. It has thriller elements to it and history thrown in. It defies genre.”

It is that genre-defying trick, so hard to pull off, that often tips a book over into huge success; no one had read a book like Longitude before Longitude.

The Shadow of the Wind arrived on these shores in May trailing European clouds of glory. It was a huge hit in Germany, shooting to No 1 in the charts after Joschka Fischer, the Foreign Minister, got hold of a copy at the Frankfurt Book Fair and remarked, on national television, that he couldn’t put it down. (How much sway would Jack Straw’s literary recommendations have?)

Yet despite a lack of British ministerial acclaim, the book — which has far more in common with recent “literary” successes such as Bernard Schlink’s The Reader than it does with, say, The Da Vinci Code — entered the top 1,000 sellers at the end of October; just before Christmas it stood at 115.

Then, in December, it was announced that the book had been chosen to appear on Richard and Judy’s Book Club. This week the industrial-strength bestseller The Da Vinci Code sold 41,779 copies; The Shadow of the Wind is more than nipping at its heels, with sales of 24,704. Watch this space.

PEOPLE'S CHOICE

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