
Nineteenth-century Europe
- from Turin to Prague to Paris
- abounds with the ghastly & the mysterious. Conspiracies rule history. Jesuits plot against Freemasons. Italian republicans strangle priests with their own intestines. French criminals plan bombings by day & celebrate black masses at night. Every nation has its own secret service, perpetrating forgeries, plots, & massacres. From the unification of Italy to the Paris Commune to the Dreyfus Affair to notorious forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Europe is in tumult & everyone needs a scapegoat. But what if, behind all of these conspiracies both real & imagined, lay one lone man? & what if that evil genius created the most infamous document of all? Eco takes his readers on an unforgettable journey through the underbelly of world-shattering events. The Prague Cemetery is Umberto Eco at his most exciting, a novel immediately hailed as his masterpiece.