Synopses & Reviews
“As brilliant and quirky as
The Name of the Rose, as mischievous and wide-ranging . . . A virtuoso performance.” —
San Francisco Chronicle
A literary joke plunges its creators into mortal danger in this captivating intellectual thriller by celebrated author Umberto Eco.
A Colonel Ardenti starts it all: He tells three editors that he has discovered a coded message about a centuries-old Knights Templar plan to tap a mystic source of power greater than atomic energy. The editors, bored with rewriting crackpot manuscripts on the occult and amused by his fantastic claims, decide to cook up a Plan of their own. Into their computer they feed manuscript pages on Satanic initiation rites, Rosicrucianism, the measurements of the Great Pyramid—and out comes a map indicating a point from which all the powers of the earth can be controlled, a point located at Foucaults Pendulum in Paris. A terrific joke, they think. Until people begin to disappear mysteriously, starting with the colonel . . .
“An encyclopedic detective story about a search for the center of an ancient, still-living conspiracy of men who seek not merely power over the earth but the power of the earth itself . . . An intellectual triumph.” —Anthony Burgess, The New York Times Book Review
UMBERTO ECO is a professor of semiotics at the University of Bologna and the bestselling author of numerous novels and essays. He lives in Milan.
Review
"[The book] is not meant to be easy....[But] great are the rewards for those who actually manage to read it....You may call the book an intellectual triumph, if not a fictional one." Anthony Burgess, The New York Times Book Review
Review
"An intellectual adventure story, as sensational, thrilling and packed with arcana as Raiders of the Lost Ark or The Count of Monte Cristo." The Washington Post Book World
Review
"[This novel] is several books wrapped up in one, some more successful than others....Although scholarship is supposed to be Eco's forte, the erudite sections of [the novel] are perhaps [its] weakest elements....[But] interest invariably picks up when the novel returns to Belbo's personal experiences." The Atlantic Monthly
Review
"As brilliant and quirky as The Name of the Rose, as mischievous and wide-ranging....A virtuoso performance." San Francisco Chronicle
Synopsis
Three editors, inspired by an extraordinary fable about a mystic source of power greater than atomic energy, begin feeding esoteric bits of knowledge into a sophisticated computer, creating an incredible game that begins taking over. Reprint.
Synopsis
Three Milan editors, who have spent much time rewriting crackpot manuscripts on the occult, decide to have a little fun. Their plan encompasses the secrets of the solar system, Satanic initiation rites, and Brazilian voodoo. A terrific joke until people begin to disappear.
Synopsis
International bestselling and award-winning author Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum is an intellectual adventure story, as sensational, thrilling, and packed with arcana as Raiders of the Lost Ark or The Count of Monte Cristo (The Washington Post Book World).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 controlled -- a point located in Paris, France, at Foucault's 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. An encyclopedic detective story...An intellectual triumph -- Anthony BurgessEndlessly diverting . . . Even more intricate and absorbing than his international bestseller The Name of the Rose. -- Time
Synopsis
International bestselling and award-winning author Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum is an intellectual adventure story, as sensational, thrilling, and packed with arcana as Raiders of the Lost Ark or The Count of Monte Cristo (The Washington Post Book World).
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 controlled -- a point located in Paris, France, at Foucault's 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.
An encyclopedic detective story . . . An intellectual triumph. --Anthony Burgess
Endlessly diverting . . . Even more intricate and absorbing than his international bestseller The Name of the Rose.--Time
Synopsis
"As brilliant and quirky as THE NAME OF THE ROSE, as mischievous and wide-raning....A virtuoso performance."
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 controlled a point located in Paris, France, at Foucault's 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 1932 in Alessandria, Italy. He is a professor of semiotics at the University of Bologna, a philosopher, historian, literary critic and aethetician. He is the author of the international bestselling novels The Name of the Rose and The Island of the Day Before, as well as three collections of popular essays, Travels in Hyperreality, Misreadings, and How to Travel with a Salmon & Other Essays. Mr. Eco 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