I really wanted to love this book. I’ve read Eco before – The Name of the Rose and Foucault’s Pendulum – and really enjoyed his work. I was expecting to feel the same about this book.

I’m not even really sure what I found less enjoyable about it. It certainly isn’t as densely written as Foucault’s Pendulum and it covers some of the same sort of ground – conspiracies, fakes, the Masons – I just couldn’t get excited about it. In fact, at one point I was ready to abandon it altogether. I hate to not finish a book and besides I’d already said I would review it for this challenge. So I plodded onwards.

In actual fact, about half way through, the narrative suddenly caught

me and I was intrigued to see where it would all end up. In terms of historical accuracy, Eco claims that all the events and characters existed in real life which is a little unnerving as this book is about anti-semitism and the faking of documents that suggested a Jewish global conspiracy that is said to have influenced Hitler. That gave the book a rather disturbing air.

One of the more convincing elements of this book was the description of the mind of Simonini, a man full of hatred and who was willing to kill anyone who got in the way of his grand plans. He becomes so disturbed that he actually takes on the persona of one of the many people that he kills. He was very effectively written and genuinely unsettling.

Ultimately, I think that I would have enjoyed this book more if it had started about halfway through and avoided all the detail about Garibaldi. And then perhaps it could have continued a bit longer as I felt I was just beginning to enjoy it when it actually ended.

Overview from www.bn.com: 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?

Umberto Eco takes his readers on a remarkable journey through the underbelly of world-shattering events. Here is Eco at his most exciting, a book immediately hailed as a masterpiece.

My Review:

The Prague Cemetery was not at all what I expected it to be. The last book I read by Umberto Eco was The Name of the Rose which had a totally different plot line. It was a medieval murder mystery while The Prague Cemetery takes place in a completely different time period and although it is something of a mystery, this mystery is far more bizarre than his previous work. In fact, I am having some difficulty in explaining the plot myself so I hope you’ll avail yourself of the above description for that.

I could begin with the main character but he too is something of a mystery. He grows up during the events of the Italian period known as the Risorgimento, known in English as the Unification. Most people probably don’t know that Italy as a country is younger even than the USA. It didn’t officially exist until the 1800’s. And during this period, the future of the country seemed to be up for grabs.

Also during this period, our main character grows up, primarily in the care of an antisemitic grandfather. His father dies fighting to make Italy a republic but not before also instilling in him a deep distrust of the Jesuits and the Catholic Church in general. These two things serve him well in his future occupation as forger.

He falls into this occupation almost as an afterthought when his inheritance is stolen from him by his future employers’ cunning. It is only then that he discovers that the man had been dealing in forging documents based solely on the words of his clients who have conveniently “lost” whatever documents they had to prove their claims.

Our good Captain Simonini (or perhaps not so good) gradually became more and more adept at the art of forgery as well as the art of politics. Eventually he got his revenge and sold out his own boss, going into business for himself.

His lifetime, according his diary, seems to have been spent largely on earning money by secretly working for various authorities forging documents and convincing some rather naïve innocents to betray themselves before he invents the story of the Prague Cemetery, his greatest antisemitic work to date. Before he can stop it, it begins to take on a life of its own in his never-ending quest to convince the rest of Europe that the world would be in a better place if there were no Jews or Masons.

The rest of his time is spent trying to figure out if he is a split personality. The other man being a clergyman by the name of Abbe Dalla Piccola whose handwriting, distinctly different from his own, is found in the Captain’s diary from time to time.

If he is a different person, Simonini finds it odd that he knows so much about him while he remembers very little about Dalla Piccola. And while this mystery deepens, Simonini’s other problems, such as the bodies that appear in the sewer underneath his residence, only increase.

In the end, he must uncover the truth before his deceptions are exposed and deal with his long-standing prejudices before it is too late. If I cared more about him, I might have been more anxious for him to do just that. However, I found that the more I got to know him, the less I liked him.

Still this book had an entertaining story even if it did seem a little far-fetched. For this reason I am recommending it.

Contains: some nudity, antisemitism, and satanic ritual as well as violence.

Below is the link for the something of a trailer for the book. Sorry that I could not paste it but ever since Word Press has changed some of its features I haven’t been able to figure out how to upload videos anymore. If anyone knows, can you please inform me?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDnqqHs6_80

I went along to the city centre and met up with my Mom. We had some coffee and then went along to get some Chrsitmas shopping. I got The Prague Cemetary by Umberto Eco as present for my brother’s wife and the Pointless game as a present for my Dad. I also got a book called 11.22.63 by Stephen King for myself. I also got a new pair of shoes for the winter. Then we went to the German Christmas Market which was absolutely jam packed with people and had some hot gluwine and a thick beefburger with cheese and onions on it.

On my way home I got groceries for the coming week. That’s me pretty much done with the Christmas shopping now. All I really need to get is some wrapping paper and something for my brother’s dog.

The Prague Cemetery

The worldwide best seller, The Prague Cemetery (Il cimitero di Praga, in Italian) is a fictional novel by Italian author Umberto Eco which was published in 2010.

The novel starts in Paris, France in March 1897. A man who is variously a secret agent, adventurer and forger is asked to investigate assassination and political intrigue which may affect the future of Europe. His name is Captain Simone Simonini.

Various  non-fictional characters appear in the novel including are Sigmund Freud, Maurice Joly  and Eugène Sue. The novel touches on freemasonry, conspiracy theories,  and devil worship.

This is a fascinating book from Umberto Eco which, as always is written very well and which has an intricate plot. Well worth a read.

• “The Cave Art Debate” by Andrew Curry in Smithsonian, March 2012. [Article]

Short article about 40,000-year-old ivory figurines of a woman. Interesting to consider this in light of Africa as I continue to read it. Humans in their contemporary sense have only existed for about 150,000 years, and we were clearly making art almost a third of that ago. Again, the book Africa makes an important distinction that our capacity for imagination is one of the key defining traits of modern humans, and this would serve as historical evidence.

• “Talking crap in Holland v America” by M.S. in The Economist, 31 August 2012. [Article]

Another short article about the lies and liars in American politics and those in Dutch politics. The upshot is that Holland has neutral space in its politics due to its 4 to 6 relevant political parties whereas in America neutral space doesn’t exist because you’re either with us or against us you terrible communist. I agree, more political parties in America would be great. Because realistically neither party can represent most of person’s political views. A lot of people fall somewhere between–socially liberal and economically conservative seems to be the popular choice. But even us progressive democrats don’t feel well represented by the current Democratic party. Of course, to have more than two parties, we would need electoral reform….

• Pages 230-250 of The Prague Cemetery by Umberto Eco. [Book]

The conspiracy which draws in Simonini is fleshed out a lot in these pages. In addition, we get a brief (and warped) accounting of French history between the years 1869-71, pretty much the fall of the Second French Empire and the rise of the Paris Commune. Like most Eco books, intrepid readers are required to do additional research if they want to have a full understanding of what’s going on. (The characters talk about real life figures in a very cursory way–oh that Napoleon the Third, what an idiot–which is realistic but uninformative.)

Although truthfully, I’m not sure I want to clarify events. The main character is a liar through and through and relying on his descriptions brings the reader closer to him as a persona: let us experience his fabrications. This reminds me starkly of the Economist article above, with the Dutch headline ”The results count, not the truth”. That could be the motto for Lost. The article also makes reference to the “fashionable, world-weary ‘ah, but what is truth?’ pique”–and indeed, with the political fudging in present day and the lies of Simonini in this book, I do wonder what is truth. Truth is of course a human construct, there are no immutable facts really, but what I regret is that we no longer even accept the grounds for debate.

This is a tangent that I refuse to get into in the first entry of my reading diary. I find Simonini’s lies entertaining, I find modern politician’s lies annoying, and I can’t help but recognize that they’re two sides of the same coin. There’s 150 pages left of this book, this isn’t the end of this topic.

• “Left Behind” by Todd Gitlin in Foreign Policy, 5 September 2012. [Essay]

In which the author bemoans the lack of an energized, cohesive leftist opposition to middle-conservative President Barack Obama. In sum, he notes that progressives have no real options left after being stranded at the alter by Obama. If we forsake him, we risk a Romney presidency and all the neocons that might imply. So we’ve made a “cold peace” with Obama. What a sorry state for progressives like me. We could bang the drum of electoral reform: if enacted, those of us further left on the spectrum could formalize a Green or Democratic Socialist party or the like. (And the Tea Party could form their own!) Until then, we’re stuck in this deafening debate between moderates and conservatives.

• “A history of power: The mighty coin” in The Economist, 1 September 2012. [Review]

Review of a book by David Priestland that paints a history of the world as a battle between soldiers, wise men, merchants, and workers. You can guess the ending: Merchants have currently won, and the author is sad we’re trying to repair the system rather than come up with a new one. He doesn’t have much advice beyond restoring technocrats to power.

Sadly no Africa last night; instead I spent six hours doing a final read-through of my e-book. Just released! Wowza. I suppose that counts as reading too, but I have nothing to say about it now because my brain is tired.

Umberto Eco’s books are characterised by a search for secret knowledge. What secrets are kept, and by which characters, in this book? Another theme is that the secrets gradually destroy or liberate their keepers. Which knowledges destroy their holders in this book? Which liberate their holders? Does a secret have to be exposed to be liberating or destructive, or can merely keeping it harm or aid a character?

The setting for this novel is precisely of a particular time and place. How does this add to the book? Could the same story have been told in a more stylised or fantastic setting?

Eco claims much of the book’s contents are “true” in the sense of being what historical people believed to be true. Are there any points in the plot where characters, believing things to be true, act in ways which the average modern person would not act?

Eco also claims that only the main character is made up, all of the others really existed. Does this matter, in the sense that the characters are not necessarily accurate portraits of historical figures, but rather Eco’s interpretations of them?

How unreliable is the main narrator in this book? What does an unreliable narrator, in this case, let the author get away with that an omniscient observer would not? Who is the third narratorial voice, do you think?

Eco stated in interviews that he wanted to create as unlikable a character as possible for the protagonist. How much do you dislike him, on a visceral level? Was that important ot the success of the book as a work or art, or as a leisurely read? Were any of the characters likeable?

The text itself is syntactically complicated. Does this interfere with the story, for you, or does its relative turgidity add to the sense of piecing things together?

The novel is set at a time when widespread mass communication was just becoming possible, but methods of filtering the information for quality had not been developed. Can you see parallels to the dawn of the information society?

What is Eco trying to accomplish with the lists on so many pages?

The novel is densely packed with real historical events, but Nineteenth Century Europe is not particularly well-covered in the average Australian education. Did you find yourself confronted with indecipherable parts? Is this a bug or a feature?

The Booklover’s Rating:  ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

I either love Umberto Eco’s novels or I hate them and don’t even attept to finish them.  For example, I loved The Name of the Rose and  Foucault’s Pendulum.  I hated Baudolino.  So what about  The Prague Cemetary, you ask?  Loved it!

The Prague Cemetery is a story in which all the characters except one—the main character—really existed. Even the protagonist’s grandfather, the author of a mysterious actual letter that triggered modern anti- Semitism, is historical.

The only made up character is completely despicable and you will learn this on page one.  Simonini (and his alter ego Abbe Piccola) is not a nice person.  In fairness, you might expect that people engaged in intelligence work might not have the same scruples that others do.  They are often asked to do things that are simply abhorrent to the rest of us and Simonini does these things and more.

The Prague Cemetary can be difficult reading.  The plot revolves around the creation of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.  If you are not familiar with this particular conspiracy theory, check it out online before you read Eco’s novel  Also,  I suggest you consult the chapter guide Eco included at the end of the novel prior to beginning the book.  This will make the plot somewhat easier to follow.

The mystery surrounding the creation of the protocols makes this story for me – I do love a good conspiracy theory!  Eco’s use of the historical facts as a  basis for his novel makes it VERY interesting and only made me want to research the information more (if only there were more hours in the day).  I loved this book, but as I read this novel, Goldman Sachs and its global activities were in the back of my mind.  But it’s just a conspiracy theory — right?

Book Details:  Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Trade (November 8, 2011), 464 pages, ISBN:  0547577532.