Carlos Ruiz Zafón leaves behind characters who will never die

On the dust jacket of the Spanish edition of Carlos Ruiz Zafón’s monumental final novel, “The Labyrinth of the Spirits,” the Catalan master storyteller, stares into the distance, as if he’s lost in thought, almost as if stopping to pose is an inconvenience, a waste of precious time.

His eyebrows arch and his jaw clenches ever so slightly. It is the look of an artist who has exhaustively wrenched from his imagination every word he placed on the page, yet still might be thinking of a few final tweaks.