The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
|
| Author | Umberto Eco |
|---|---|
| Original title (if not in English) | La Misteriosa fiamma della Regina Loana |
| Translator | Geoffrey Brock |
| Country | Italy |
| Language | Italian |
| Genre(s) | Historical novel, Mystery |
| Publisher | Harcourt (2005) |
| Released | 2005 |
| Media Type | Print (Hardcover) |
| Pages | 480 p. (hardcover edition) |
| ISBN | ISBN 0-15-101140-0 (hardcover edition) |
La Misteriosa Fiamma della Regina Loana ("The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana") is a novel by Italian writer Umberto Eco. It was first published in Italian in 2004, and an English language translation was published in spring 2005. The title is a reference to a character from the American comic strip Tim Tyler's Luck.
The plot of the book concerns Yambo (full name: Giambattista Bodoni), a 59-year-old Milanese antiquarian book dealer who loses his episodic memory due to a stroke. At the beginning of the novel, he can remember everything he has ever read, but does not remember his family, his past, or even his own name. Yambo decides to go to Solara, his childhood home, parts of which he has abandoned following family tragedy, to see if he can rediscover his lost past. After days of searching through old newspapers, vinyl records, books, magazines and childhood comic books, he is unsuccessful in regaining memories, though he relives the story of his generation and the society in which his dead parents and grandfather lived. Ready to abandon his quest, he discovers a copy of the original First Folio of 1623 among his grandfather's books, the shock of which causes another incident, during which he relives his lost memories of childhood. The final section of the book is, therefore, a literary exploration of the traditional phenomenon whereby a person's life flashes before them, as Yambo struggles to regain the one memory he seeks above all others: the face of the girl he loved as a student and ever after. (Continue synopsis)
Umberto Eco includes myriad references to both high and low culture in the book (notably the Flash Gordon strips), and he has drawn heavily on his own experiences growing up in Mussolini's Fascist Italy. Like other Eco novels, The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana boasts abundant intertextuality. Unlike other fiction of the author, however, the setting is modern (1991). Eco has stated that The Mysterious Flame will be his last novel.
[edit] External links
 |
This article about a 2000s novel is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
