Synopses & Reviews
The #1 international bestseller, from Umberto Eco, author of The Name of the Rose“Vintage Eco . . . the book is a triumph.” - New York Review of Books
Nineteenth-century Europe—from Turin to Prague to Paris—abounds with the ghastly and the mysterious. Jesuits plot against Freemasons. Italian republicans strangle priests with their own intestines. French criminals plan bombings by day and celebrate Black Masses at night. Every nation has its own secret service, perpetrating forgeries, plots, and massacres. Conspiracies rule history. From the unification of Italy to the Paris Commune to the Dreyfus Affair to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Europe is in tumult and everyone needs a scapegoat. But what if, behind all of these conspiracies, both real and imagined, lay one lone man?
“[Eco] demonstrates once again that his is a voice that compels our attention” - San Francisco Chronicle
“Choreographed by a truth that is itself so strange a novelist need hardly expand on it to produce a wondrous tale . . . Eco is to be applauded for bringing this stranger-than-fiction truth vividly to life.” - New York Times
“Classic Eco, with a difference.” - Los Angeles Times
Review
"I find this book fascinating, perhaps the best Eco has written in years." Huffington Post
Review
"A well-executed thriller...provocative and suspenseful." USA Today
Review
"A whirlwind tour of conspiracy and political intrigue...this dark tale is delightfully embellished with sophisticated and playful commentary on, among other things, Freud, metafiction, and the challenges of historiography." Booklist
Review
"Vintage Eco...the book is a triumph." New York Review of Books
Review
"[Eco] demonstrates once again that his is a voice that compels our attention." San Francisco Chronicle
Review
"Choreographed by a truth that is itself so strange a novelist need hardly expand on it to produce a wondrous tale....Eco is to be applauded for bringing this stranger-than-fiction truth vividly to life." New York Times
Review
"Classic Eco, with a difference." Los Angeles Times
Synopsis
The #1 international bestseller, from Umberto Eco, author of The Name of the Rose "Vintage Eco . . . the book is a triumph." - New York Review of Books
Nineteenth-century Europe--from Turin to Prague to Paris--abounds with the ghastly and the mysterious. Jesuits plot against Freemasons. Italian republicans strangle priests with their own intestines. French criminals plan bombings by day and celebrate Black Masses at night. Every nation has its own secret service, perpetrating forgeries, plots, and massacres. Conspiracies rule history. From the unification of Italy to the Paris Commune to the Dreyfus Affair to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Europe is in tumult and everyone needs a scapegoat. But what if, behind all of these conspiracies, both real and imagined, lay one lone man?
" Eco] demonstrates once again that his is a voice that compels our attention" - San Francisco Chronicle
"Choreographed by a truth that is itself so strange a novelist need hardly expand on it to produce a wondrous tale . . . Eco is to be applauded for bringing this stranger-than-fiction truth vividly to life." - New York Times
"Classic Eco, with a difference." - Los Angeles Times
Synopsis
The Prague Cemetery is the #1 international bestseller from the award-winning and New York Times best-selling author of The Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco.
"Vintage Eco...the book is a triumph." -- New York Review of Books
Nineteenth-century Europe -- from Turin to Prague to Paris -- abounds with the ghastly and the mysterious. Jesuits plot against Freemasons. Italian republicans strangle priests with their own intestines. French criminals plan bombings by day and celebrate Black Masses at night.
Every nation has its own secret service, perpetrating forgeries, plots, and massacres. Conspiracies rule history. From the unification of Italy to the Paris Commune to the Dreyfus Affair to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Europe is in tumult and everyone needs a scapegoat.
But what if behind all of these conspiracies, both real and imagined, lay one lone man?
"Choreographed by a truth that is itself so strange a novelist need hardly expand on it to produce a wondrous tale...Eco is to be applauded for bringing this stranger-than-fiction truth vividly to life." -- New York Times
Synopsis
The Prague Cemetery is the #1 international bestselling historical novel from the award-winning and New York Times bestselling author of The Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco.
Nineteenth-century Europe--from Turin to Prague to Paris--abounds with the ghastly and the mysterious. Jesuits plot against Freemasons. Italian republicans strangle priests with their own intestines. French criminals plan bombings by day and celebrate Black Masses at night.
Every nation has its own secret service, perpetrating forgeries, plots, and massacres. Conspiracies rule history. From the unification of Italy to the Paris Commune to the Dreyfus Affair to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Europe is in tumult and everyone needs a scapegoat.
But what if behind all of these conspiracies, both real and imagined, lay one lone man?
"Choreographed by a truth that is itself so strange a novelist need hardly expand on it to produce a wondrous tale... Eco is to be applauded for bringing this stranger-than-fiction truth vividly to life."--The New York Times
Synopsis
The #1 international bestseller, from Umberto Eco, author of "The Name of the Rose"
Synopsis
The latest international bestseller from the author of
The Name of the Rose and
Foucault's Pendulum. Nineteenth-century Europe — from Turin to Prague to Paris — abounds with the ghastly and the mysterious. Jesuits plot against Freemasons. Italian republicans strangle priests with their own intestines. French criminals plan bombings by day and celebrate Black Masses at night. Every nation has its own secret service, perpetrating forgeries, plots, and massacres. Conspiracies rule history. From the unification of Italy to the Paris Commune to the Dreyfus Affair to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Europe is in tumult and everyone needs a scapegoat. But what if, behind all of these conspiracies, both real and imagined, lay one lone man? What if that evil genius created the world's most infamous document?
Synopsis
The Prague Cemetery is the latest international bestseller from Umberto Eco, author of The Name of the Rose. Nineteenth-century Europe abounds with political and religious conspiracies from Turin to Prague to Paris. What if, behind it all, lay one lone man determining the fate of the Continent?
Synopsis
Yambo, a sixtyish rare-book dealer who lives in Milan, has suffered a loss of memory-he can remember the plot of every book he has ever read, every line of poetry, but he no longer knows his own name, doesn't recognize his wife or his daughters, and remembers nothing about his parents or his childhood. In an effort to retrieve his past, he withdraws to the family home somewhere in the hills between Milan and Turin. There, in the sprawling attic, he searches through boxes of old newspapers, comics, records, photo albums, and adolescent diaries. And so Yambo relives the story of his generation: Mussolini, Catholic education and guilt, Josephine Baker, Flash Gordon, Fred Astaire. His memories run wild, and the life racing before his eyes takes the form of a graphic novel. Yambo struggles through the frames to capture one simple, innocent image: that of his first love.
A fascinating, abundant new novel-wide-ranging, nostalgic, funny, full of heart-from the incomparable Eco.
Synopsis
Bored with their work, three Milanese editors cook up "the Plan," a hoax that connects the medieval Knights Templar with other occult groups from ancient to modern times. This produces a map indicating the geographical point from which all the powers of the earth can be controlleda point located in Paris, France, at Foucaults Pendulum. But in a fateful turn the joke becomes all too real, and when occult groups, including Satanists, get wind of the Plan, they go so far as to kill one of the editors in their quest to gain control of the earth.
Orchestrating these and other diverse characters into his multilayered semiotic adventure, Eco has created a superb cerebral entertainment.
About the Author
UMBERTO ECO was born in Alessandria, Italy in 1932. He is the author of five novels and numerous collections of essays. A semiotician, philosopher, medievalist, and for many years a professor at the University of Bologna, Eco is now president of the Scuola Superiore di Studi Umanistici there. He has received Italy's highest literary award, the Premio Strega, has been named a Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur by the French government, and is an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He lives in Milan.
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
KETER
1. When the light of the infinite
2. Wee haue divers curious Clocks
HOKHMAH
3. In hanc utilitatem clementes angeli
4. He who attempts to penetrate into the Rose Garden
5. And begin by combining this name
6. Judá León se dio a permutaciones
BINAH
7. Do not expect too much of the end of the world
8. Having come from the light and from the gods
9. In his right hand he held a golden trumpet
10. And finally nothing is cabalistically inferred
11. His sterility was infinite
12. Sub umbra alarum tuarum
13. Li frere, li mestre du Temple
14. He, if asked, would also confess to killing Our Lord
15. I will go and fetch you help from the Comte dAnjou
16. He had been in the order only nine months
17. And thus did the knights of the Temple vanish
18. A mass terrifyingly riddled with fissures and caverns
19. The Order has never ceased to exist, not for a moment
20. Invisible center, the sovereign who must reawaken
21. The Graal . . . is a weight so heavy
22. The knights wanted to face no further questions
HESED
23. The analogy of opposites
24. Sauvez la faible Aischa
25. These mysterious initiates
26. All the traditions of the earth
27. One day, saying that he had known Pontius Pilate
28. There is a body that enfolds the whole of the world
29. Simply because they change and hide their names
30. And the famous confraternity of the Rosy Cross
31. The majority were in reality only Rosicrucians
32. Valentiniani per ambiguitates bilingues
33. The visions are white, blue, white, pale red
GEVURAH
34. Beydelus, Demeymes, Adulex
35. I mi son Lia
36. Yet one caution let me give
37. Whoever reflects on four things
38. Prince of Babylon, Knight of the Black Cross
39. Doctor of the Planispheres, Hermetic Philosopher
40. Cowards die many times before their deaths
41. Daath is situated at the point where the abyss
42. We are all in agreement, whatever we say
43. People who meet on the street
44. Invoke the forces
45. And from this springs the extraordinary question
46. You will approach the frog several times
47. The sense alert and the memory clear
48. The volume of the Great Pyramid in cubic inches
49. A spiritual knighthood of initiates
50. For I am the first and the last 51. When therefore a Great Cabalist
52. A colossal chessboard that extends beneath the earth
53. Unable to control destinies on earth openly
54. The prince of darkness
55. I call a theatre
56. He began playing his shining trumpet
57. On every third tree a lantern
58. Alchemy, however, is a chaste prostitute
59. And if such monsters are generated
60. Poor idiot!
61. The Golden Fleece is guarded
62. We consider societies druidic if
63. What does the fish remind you of?
TIFERET
64. To dream of living in an unknown city
65. The frame was twenty foot square
66. If our hypothesis is correct
67. Da Rosa, nada digamos agora
68. Let your garments be white
69. Elles deviennent le Diable
70. Let us remember the secret references
71. We do not even know with certainty
72. Nos inuisibles pretendus
73. Another curious case
74. Though his will be good
75. The initiates are at the edge of that path
76. Dilettantism
77. This herb is called Devilbane
78. Surely this monstrous hybrid
79. He opened his coffer
80. When White arrives
81. They could explode the whole surface of our planet
82. The earth is a magnetic body
83. A map is not the territory
84. Following the plans of Verulam
85. Phileas Fogg. A name that is also a signature
86. It was to them that Eiffel turned
87. It is a remarkable coincidence
88. Templarism is Jesuitism
89. In the bosom of the deepest darkness
90. All the outrages attributed to the Templars
91. How well you have unmasked those infernal sects
92. With all the power and terror of Satan
93. Whereas we stay in the wings
94. En avoit-il le moindre soupçon?
95. Namely the Jewish Cabalists
96. A cover is always necessary
97. I am that I am
98. Its racist gnosis, its rites and initiations
99. Guenonism plus armored divisions
100. I declare the earth is hollow
101. Qui operatur in Cabala
102. A very thick and high wall
103. Your secret name shall have 36 letters
104. These texts are not addressed to common mortals
105. Delirat lingua, labat mens
106. List No. 5
NEZAH
107. Dost thou see yon black dog? 108. Are there several Powers at work?
109. Saint-Germain . . . very polished and witty
110. They mistook the movements and walked backward
111. Cest une leçon par la suite
HOD
112. Four our Ordinances and Rites
113. Our cause is a secret
114. The ideal pendulum
115. If the eye could see the demons
116. Je voudrais être la tour
117. Madness has an enormous pavilion
YESOD
118. The conspiracy theory of society
119. The garland of the trumpet was set afire
MALKHUT
120. They hold for certain that they are in the light