| The Prague Cemetery | |
|---|---|
| Author(s) | Umberto Eco |
| Original title | Il cimitero di Praga |
| Country | Italy |
| Language | Italian |
| Genre(s) | Historical novel, Mystery |
| Publisher | Bompiani (2010) |
| Publication date | 2010 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover) |
| Pages | 540 pp (hardcover edition) |
| ISBN | ISBN 8845266222 |
The Prague Cemetery (Italian: Il cimitero di Praga) is a novel by Italian author Umberto Eco published in October 2010. The book is a worldwide bestseller (being the best selling book in Italy, Spain, Argentina, Mexico and others) that sold millions of copies as of 2010[update].[1]
Contents |
Paris, March 1897: Captain Simone Simonini—adventurer, forger, secret agent—is called upon to investigate assassination and political intrigue which affects Europe's future.
According to Eco, "the characters of this novel are not imaginary. Except the main character, they all lived in reality, including his grandfather, author of the mysterious message to abbot Barruelo which gave rise to all modern anti-Semitism". Eco goes on to say:
The nineteenth century was full of monstrous and mysterious events: the mysterious death of Ippolito Nievo, the forgery of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion that inspired Hitler's extermination of the Jews, the Dreyfus affair and endless intrigue spun by the secret police of different countries, the Masons, Jesuit plots, and other events whose accuracy can't ever be authenticated, but that serve as fodder for feuilletons 150 years later.[2]
Other non-fictional characters in the novel are Sigmund Freud, Léo Taxil, Diana Vaughan, Eugène Sue and Maurice Joly. Major themes include conspiracy theories, freemasonry, and palladism or devil worship.
Eco infuses the novel with other books as it explores the 19th-century novels that were plagiarized in the Protocols of Zion, and is structured like one.[3] The spirit of the novel is Alexander Dumas, in particular an intertextuality with his novel Joseph Balsamo (1846).
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