The Prague Cemetery

It was the end of empires and the beginning of nations. The Pope and Garibaldi struggle in Italy; Napoleon III vies with the Jacobins. The Jesuits and Freemasons nibble at the edges. Prussia threatens; communism looms. These troubling times are made more treacherous by forgeries and fakes. [We need you to spy for us; this is what you will find; create the documents that prove it.] Dalla Piccola and Captain Simonini, aided by a Narrator, struggle to remember their life in the pages of a diary. What horror erased their memory? Always willing to defame, defraud and dispatch enemies, they have been available to the highest bidder for whatever cause, without losing the stress on their secondary agenda: Eliminate the Jews. As the political tide turns, heroes and villains slip in and out of favor. There is only one perpetual scapegoat possible, only one enemy who remains constant. Only an author of Eco's skill (and standing) could make us continue reading the story of the man responsible for the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which has brought so much misery and death to the world since the late 1800s. Out of many attempts, each feeding from the others, only one version will make it to Russia and immor(t)ality.

The Prague Cemetery is the fifth book that I have read of Umberto Eco after Foucault's pendulum, The Name of the Rose, Baudolino and The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana. While I loved the first three, I have been more than a little ambivalent about the latter two. Baudolino was not bad. It was, simply, in my mind not spectacular as the Name of the Rose or Foucault's Pendulum. My real problem was with 'Queen Loana', which seemed to me to be an exercise in vanity. Therefore, I was eagerly looking forward to the Prague Cemetery, which seemed to have a plot reminiscent of the Focault's Pendulum. Therefore, when I found the book in the digital library I was thrilled and immediately picked it up.

The Prague Cemetery is about a half Piedmontese forger and mouchard named Simonini through who seems to have lost his memory and a mysterious Abbe Dalla Picola who lives in the same building as Simonini about whom Simonini was not aware of until recently and who may or may not be Simonini himself. Based on advice given by one Sigmund Froide, Simonini, starts putting his memories on paper to which the Abbe adds on to or clarifies. The Wikipedia page for the book boasts that all the characters except for Simonini are based on real characters and we get appearances from the famous personalities like the aforementioned Freud, Dreyfuss, and Dumas. The book tries to imagine what sort of person or what sort of circumstances would have created the reprehensible Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which was responsible for so many atrocities against the Jews including the Holocaust. For a single book, like any other Eco Novel, The Prague Cemetery is chock full of brilliant ides. Yet, somehow, it is not the return to form neither I nor as I suspect the legions of Eco fans were expecting.

The problem with the Prague Cemetery is not that it has an unlikeable protagonist or that most of the issues presented in this book are not relevant today or even that there is not one decent human being in the many 'real' characters that are presented in this novel. The real problem is that it reads as if he author wanted to tick off everything that happened between the 1840s and the turn of the century. Yes, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion are the thread that holds the entire narrative together, but there is just too much happening for a reader to really appreciate the impact of everything that is happening. Simonini just seems to flit from one thing to another. I think Eco missed a trick by placing the entire burden of the narrative on Simonini, who, surprisingly for his many neuroses and biases, is more or less a cipher. The first half with the story of Garibaldi and the unification of Italy and, what is essentially the second half, in Paris are so different they don't gel together except for 'Simonini' and less said about the central conceit the better. Suffice to say that it was unnecessary and poorly executed

I enjoyed learning some of the turbulent history of Italy and France from this intriguing novel. In this story we retrace the life of a man who has been mixed up in spying and deception, including the forging of documents, for his whole life; in fact it was his primary source of income.

Eco uses the same tool he used in The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana, i.e. the experience of an amnesiac recovering his memory, to unfold the history leading up to the time when the narrator is telling his tale. Captain Simon Simonini is not the most pleasant of men as is attested early in the book when he lambasts, in the most explicit of terms, his distaste of firstly Jews, then the Germans, next the French, the Italians, the Catholic Church (especially Jesuits), and Freemasons. At one point he concludes that Jesuits are merely Masons dressed as women. At several points in the story he expresses his total distaste of all things female. It appears there is no-one in the world he likes.

His one saving grace is his delight in good food, and we are treated to descriptions of some delicious meals, and even a couple of recipes.

Eco's shrewd observations and use of language provide the reader with some great phrases and generalised descriptions, all this adding to the flavour of the book and helping to demonstrate the way Simonini's mind works.

The Prague Cemetery is about governments wanting to manipulate groups of people, and to steer public opinion in a direction that leaves the politicians, or should I say the people in power, free to build up their own position and wealth. In particular, Eco deals with the deliberate ploy to instil hatred of Jews around the world.

The explicitly named central target of this book is the forged document known as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. This document was produced by the Russians in 1905 to stir up hatred and convince the world that there was a Jewish conspiracy to take over the world.

Some people have interpreted Eco's book as being anti-Semitic, but it is quite the opposite. It emphasised the phoney nature of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and uses this forged document to describe how people can manipulate opinion and use false documents to create their desired political environment. The case used in this book is the stirring up of hatred towards the Jews, but it can be interpreted on a more general level as describing the tendency governments have for creating a common enemy for the people to focus their attention on and act as a distraction to allow the government get on with bettering the position of its members. It is exactly the type of ploy used after the Cold War to vilify the Iranians as a replacement for the Soviets; and the creation of a clear and present danger, such as the abuse of intelligence reports to justify the start of the second Gulf War.

I enjoyed this book and intend to dip into it often to pull out phrases and to re-read some of Eco's clever prose. Eco's books do not always appeal to me but I found this one great entertainment and quite informative.

Probably not a good thing to mix a chronic sore back, codeine and The Prague Cemetery interspersed with episodes from Boardwalk Empire. Now I've gone all paranoid resting at home...they're all after me, Masons, Jews, Jesuits and gangsters.

Protagonist Simon Simonini is like some anti-Forrest Gump. His hand is in several major events in 19th century Italy and France, but his is the hand of a murderer, a forger and ultimately the impetus for the Final Solution. Sill, he's a likeable fellow if for nothing more than his skill in his chosen profession and love of good food.

Eco's research is the highlight of the novel, particularly his outstanding sources for his major characters. It would be terrific to read a Reader's Guide to this book - just who were these people and how did their anti-Masonic, Jewish and/or Clerical outlook influence those in the next century? It reads like non-fiction, perhaps a treatise on anti-Semitism on the 19th century?

The downside the length and repetitiveness of the story. There's only so many episodes of intrigue and conspiracy and forgery you can deal with before interest wanes. I skipped several chapters (happy to skip the Black Mass) and it didn't seem to matter too much at all.

Eco seems to love a good conspiracy. His fictional account of writing the Protocols of the Elders of Zion is particularly intelligent. Most people surely saw these as false, but tell me after reading 400 pages of the ravings of Simonini and his collaborators you start believing there's some truth in it. So must those who read the Protocols and the hundreds of other conspiracy magazines and documents freely available. Once you pound this stuff into your head, it starts getting to you - and everyone loves to believe a good conspiracy theory.

The story that underlies The Prague Cemetery is told, for the most part, by Simone Simonini, a forger who thrives on hatred -- of Jews and Germans, Jesuits and Masons, the French and Italians (although he is half French and half Italian), artists and women, his parents and God -- a man whose motto is "I hate therefore I am." In an introductory note, Umberto Eco tells us he tried to create "the most cynical and disagreeable" character in the history of literature. He may not have succeeded, but he put forth a worthy effort. Recognizing that it is possible to laugh at (rather than with) hateful people frees the reader to enjoy (or at least tolerate) the absurdly bigoted ramblings of Eco's scornful rogue.

As the novel opens, Simonini is having an identity crisis -- or an identities crisis, given his suspicion that he is not only Simonini but Abbé Dalla Piccola, about whom he knows nothing. We soon learn that Dalla Piccola is having the same crisis, wondering whether he is, in fact, Simonini -- except that Piccola seems to know more about Simonini than he knows about himself. Simonini and Piccola begin leaving messages for each other. This clever device allows Eco to explore Simonini's (mostly repulsive) moral character from both an objective and a subjective perspective. The mystery of the apparent dual identity binds the unfolding story.

Although set in the late nineteenth century, Simonini's reconstructed memories of his own past begin in mid-century Piedmont and offer an opinionated view of European history in the century's last half. Simonini is often employed as a spy for the police and various governmental entities in Italy, France, Russia, and Prussia. When the truth (in which nobody is particularly interested) is either difficult to find or inconveniently innocent, Simonini concocts stories and documents to satisfy his clients. At one point, Simonini borrows and embellishes the story of a conspiratorial gathering in an abandoned Jewish cemetery in Prague, a meeting allegedly designed to further a long-standing, sinister plan to control the world. Standing always in the middle, with loyalty to none and hatred of all, Simonini pits nation against nation, Freemason against Jesuit, and everyone against the Jews, all the while revising his story of the Prague cemetery as new potential buyers for his conspiracy theory come along.

Eco provides a bit of everything to entertain his reader in this grand novel: drama, intrigue, humor, action, philosophy, brilliant prose, strong characters, and a lengthy history lesson that culminates with the Dreyfus affair. Eco advises that all but a few minor characters (other than Simonini) really existed, and that the major historical events described in the text actually happened. Knowing that, I read the novel with Google close at hand. Learning more about the historical references probably doubled my reading time but the added context made the story more comprehensible. Serious fiction often demands something from the reader; in this case, the serious reader's effort will be repaid.

Many of the themes in The Prague Cemetery resonate in modern times, including the attempts governments make to instill fear of the "other" in their citizenry as a means of gaining power and control, an exercise that supposedly justifies "harsh measures" to control alleged criminals. There is little difference between the detentions without trial in nineteenth century French prisons that Eco describes and those that occurred at Guantanamo in our recent past. The recycling of lies and the ease with which people are fooled when told what they want to hear -- a recurring theme in Eco's novel -- is also a truth that readers might recognize in the modern world. As Simonini frequently observes, a jaded writer can dredge up a twenty year old discredited story and pass it off as new, confident that most readers (who are likely reading what they want to believe) won't know the difference, or won't care.

Some readers might be offended by a rather graphic scene involving a devotee of Lucifer named Diana and the erotic role she plays in a Black Mass. The scene is far from gratuitous -- it is, in fact, critical to the story, and beautifully written -- so I mention it only as a warning to those who might be put off by content of that nature.

Lush prose, confident storytelling, a Byzantine plot of dizzying breadth, even a series of sketches illustrating scenes in the novel -- all these elements combine to form a novel that is both serious and extraordinarily fun.

This is the story of a crime without a detective. Where the guilty, as well as the punishers, are all men living in the old Europe. Of, course, since this is a novel, there has to be one main character. The character is monsieur Simone Simonini, gourmet, forger by profession, distrusting and disliking all nations and all groups that people possibly can be sorted into. "Whom do I hate? .. Their pupils the color of toasted bread, indicating a diseased liver, corrupted by..." and etc for 7-8 pages (starting p. 5). Simonini, although fictions, is still among us, p. 433.

In the "insert a person into history" tradition, the author has to give his character an ability to play a role in history. In e.g. Jonas Jonassons "insert story", the character make bombs, here it is the characters ability to falsify documents.

There are four main events in this novel where Umberto Eco let his character be involved, and perform his duty as the authors voice, offering the "true" story of what happened. The events are: 1) The Prague Cementry story; 2) Garibaldi's victory in Messina in Sicilia in 1860, 3) the end of the Paris commune in 1871, and 4) the Dreifus case around 1894. However, I see little progress in the story, except that Simonini gets older. Thus, this is also a story where the final chapter is the same same chapter that all humans have to write. A surprise at the end had been welcome. A surprice at the end is welcome even in journal articles nowadays. Or, maybe there is an unwritten chapter of a firework at the end?

1) The Prague Cementry is an ironic chronicle where Umberto Eco tells all the tales that were never told, but probably thought. He goes into the head of all its actors and expresses their cynical worldviews in quotable sentences. Unfortunately, there are no notes and no references. Fortunately, UE describes the deceptions and lies so well that we believe the story could have been true.

2) What is the true story when Garibaldi defeated a force of 1500 men sitting on the top of the Calastrafimi hill with 800 men - untrained ? (In the Wikipedia version Garibaldi used the terrace form of the hill slope to hide. In a subsequent fight, most of the enemies' higher officers had been bought out.) The Umberto Eco version is different, there were more men to defeat, and the technique to defeat them was different, p. 124.

3) Why did the local "quartiers" of the Paris commune become defeated one by one? Wikipedia formulate it as if the soldiers "tunneled through the walls of houses". Umberto Eco gives a meaning to that cryptic expression (p. 252)

4) The fake memorandum that caused the conviction of Alfred Dreifus is according to Wikipedia fabricated by a French counter-intelligence officer, Hubert-Joseph Henry. Umberto Eco let his anti- hero Simonini be the real culprit. ("all in all, he had done a good job", p. 357)

This is a wonderful story, maybe a little long, but with so many twists and turns on history and stories that history itself becomes more interesting. Well, not always. By the way, the answer to the question in the title is yes, twice, p. 151,

Citations:"they are vicious. They kill out of boredom" p. 9" he and his supporters ended up being massacred by the scoundrels he wanted to liberate, and so you see where good intentions can lead when they take no account of the facts" p. 89 do they really exist, many anonymous letters seem to prove it and, in any event, it is quite enough to talk about something to make it exist" p. 322.

You'll probably be checking in often at the Wikipedia site while you read this. Prof. Eco's semi-serious romp through 19th-century European history uses his despicable fictional character, the forger-spy-assassin Simonini, as a focal point for his discussion of the origin of the anti-Masonic, anti-Semitic "conspiracies" of the period.

Starting in 1848 and continuing through Garibaldi's unification of Italy, the Franco-Prussian War and the Paris Commune, and onward to the Dreyfus Affair, the author educates and amuses as he parades by you a phalanx of people who actually existed, and who have imaginary encounters with his fictional creation. The tale ends with the author's masterful "explanation" of how the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" came about.

And if this weren't enough, the author also introduces a subplot in which Simonini, whose diaries form the basis for the tale, is haunted by one Abbé Dalla Piccola, who keeps interrupting the diaries with his own comments, and indeed might be the same person. To further complicate things, an unnamed narrator also is assigned to tell part of the tale. (Different typefaces are used for each, at least in the printed version.)

A word of praise, too, for Richard Dixon's elegant translation. It is not often that you pick up a book in translation that reads like it was actually written in English. This one does. And then there are the charming drawings that are sprinkled throughout the book and that add to the fun.

So why only four stars? A sequence involving black masses, Masonic rituals, and a schizoid woman goes on way too long. But you can flip through them rapidly, of course, if you wish.

Umberto Eco is a master storyteller, especially if his story has the depth of a well and the complexity of a labyrinth. Professor of Semiotics and historian of the Medieval era, Eco invariably wraps his novels around a central core of arcana and mystery. His masterpieces The Name of the Rose and Foucault's Pendulum had strikingly original tales to tell that made reading them a joy and their mysteries sheer pleasure to unravel. When Eco is less successful in weaving a fascinating tale, as he is here, then the mysteries become slightly stiff and contrived, reducing some of the pleasure.

The Prague Cemetery is a dark, occasionally revolting story. We are intended to infer that the history discussed here is the source of much of our modern era's dysfunctional qualities. That is probably true, but by giving the novel an almost Kafkaesque angst, history is attenuated in the grim atmosphere and Eco's central ideas become murky and diffuse. After awhile we are left wondering just what we are meant to believe and why it even matters. This weakens the book considerably. Old hands at reading Eco will still derive pleasure from this dark novel. Those unsure of whether they are up to reading this difficult and brilliant writer, but have decided to take the plunge, are advised to begin with The Name of the Rose, which is a masterpiece of modern fiction. The Prague Cemetery is better left to those displaying firmer footing in Umberto Eco's mysterious, troubling universe.

This is a brilliant novel. What makes it so delightful is the realization (once you read the afterward) that almost every character you have encountered, even the minor ones, was someone who actually existed. This novel is an excellent overview (wildly distorted through fun-house mirrors) of European history: Italian unification, the French Commune, Dreyfus.... It is a whirling mishmash of double agents who are probably triple agents engaging in dangerous backstabbing (and sometimes frontstabbing). The motive is usually monetary. The politics are insane. Is it possible that every important political document we've ever seen is really a clever forgery? Is life really just a Victor Hugo or Eugene Sue novel?

We have multiple narrators, including one with a split personality so that the two halves do a sort of palmipsest running commentary on each other's diary entries. We get incredible and vivid detail about the squalor and poverty of the time. We also get some amazing lists of gourmet food items because one of our narrators does love to dine out in lavish splendor, which requires money, which necessitates some illegal but lucrative activities. The important topic is the attempt of a few sinister worldwide conspiracies to create additional sinister worldwide conspiracies always through forged documents. And then blame it all on the Jews. We have the Illuminati, the Rosicrucians, the Freemasons. Everyone is attacking the Jews. One of our narrators hates everyone equally--the Jews, the Italians, the Germans, the French. He spews the most despicable ideas that reek of Hitler. Yet it is all so over-the-top that his rants are often hilarious. (Think of the love child of Don Rickles and Lisa Lampanelli, as reared by Joan Rivers.) The wild satire sort of deflates the madness as we gradually see that someone is about to create the fradulent Protocols of the Elders of Zion. As someone wisely points out, "If these are Jews conspiring in Prague, why are they writing in French instead of in Hebrew or Yiddish?" The answer, of course, is hilarious.

I loved all of the detail. There are many great throw-away lines, like a clever putdown (almost an aside) of Proust and Monet. These people love their absinthe. They love stealing and betraying. They love forgery. There are lots of old black-and-white lithograph pictures to give the novel a 19th-century look. If you have enjoyed previous Eco novels steeped in colorful historical detail, then this is another one you should read.

The premise of The Prague Cemetery is brilliant, so I almost gave it four stars---the main character is the anonymous author of the notorious Protocols of the Elders of Zion, as well as forging other documents central to various anti-Semitic and other kinds of conspiracies in nineteenth-century Europe, while all the other characters are actual historical figures who actually said (or wrote) the things they say in the story. The device of his apparently having a split personality and the story being told through journal entries the two personas write to each other makes for an unusual exploration of memory, as in some of Eco's other works (such as The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana, which I enjoyed quite a bit more than this). The execution, however, turns out to simply not be all that enjoyable to read...long stretches are, let's say rather dry. It might have been better had it been trimmed down a bit more. Still, if the basic idea of the story sounds like something you might find interesting, it might be worth reading at least once.

George Guidall's narration of this audio edition is, as usual, excellent.

Before reading this novel, I was vaguely aware that The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was a forgery but had no idea who created it or how many years it took them. As other reviewers have stated, all of the characters in the novel are real with the exception of the protagonist who is a curmudgeonly version of Forrest Gump. While there is plenty of nonfiction about the creation of the protocols out there, none of it will illicit the reader's laughter, tinged with embarrassment by his/her own tendency to believe the conspiracy theories which rampage through our age of "information", as The Prague Cemetery will. And as we know from history, conspiracy theories and the fools who believe in them can be deadly dangerous.

Note: I recommend the audible version narrated by George Guidall who does a great job bringing Eco's comically absurd protagonist to life.

Quite a tedious book. Almost unreadable. Or my IQ is on a par with that of a tampon.

I was naively lured by the title: The Prague Cemetery. I asked for it for Christmas; thinking it was some sort of supernatural whodunit . . . like THE NAME OF THE ROSE which I loved although there was nothing ghosty about it.

I was fore-warned that it was Eco's fictional attempt to link this no-name forger (whose grandpop suffered at the hands of the Jews or something -- I'd forgotten by the next 10 pages after that) to the infamous THE PROTOCOLS OF THE ELDERS OF ZION which had inspired Hitler. I slogged through it because I had a bet with a friend that I wouldn't be able to finish it. (I'm framing this hard-won quarter and putting it up on my cubicle wall.)

Conspiracies up to the yahoo and historical figures (who are less heroic than they appear in text books) march in an out of this squeaky treadmill of a book. Seriously, it feels like Eco catalogued a shopping list of every major event in European history and performed all these literary acrobatics to connect them to this nutcase.

One star for some amusing passages on the French and his religious descriptions of French cuisine. (Food Channel-- Umberto Eco is your man.) Grateful for the pictures which saved me from reading entire pages. And a memorable Black Mass which sadly was so close to the end of the book that it felt like a chipped bone tossed to us --slow-witted readers in need of a plot.

In the Prague Cemetery, Umberto Eco imagines the trail of events which leads to the creation of the Protocols of Zion. His story can be a little confusing at times but the characters who populate this book, as narrowly as they are drawn, are good representations of schools of thought in the 19th century in Europe. The machinations and self-serving efforts that he lists as contributing to the harmful Protocols are interestingly conceived and one can easily mistake this narrative as a truthful representation of the happenings of the time.

I did find the plot interesting and the time I spent reading this book worthwhile. Eco is a good writer. His intermixing of the favorite foods and the level of the restaurants chosen by the characters is a very unique way of spelling out their situations in life and their concentration on the mundane aspects of their daily living as they progressed through forgery, murder and deception from day to day in pursuit of the evil of the times.

Eco is an acquired taste, but not for the faint of heart nor the faint of mind.
His fundamental premise that reality constructed can be as dangerous as unconstructed reality gives one pause.

It is one of his major themes. The troubling part of this book is that it is based, more so than his other fictional works, on verifiable historical facts.

John T. Kuehn, Ph.D.
Past Major General Willaim Stofft Chair for Historical Research
The US Army Command and General Staff College

[B]The Prague Cemetery[/B] by Umberto Eco '''

In general I am a huge fan of Umberto Eco, and as such I was eagerly awaiting the release of the English translation of [B]The Prague Cemetery[/B]. I am sad to say that all of those elements that I love about Eco's writing-the intelligent plotting, the dense prose, the belief in his reader's ability to follow where he leads-have been carried to excess with this one.

The story is narrated by three voices, two of which are one person with a split personality, and the third is an unreliable voice of no discernible provenance. I must give a warning here about the main character. Eco has stated that he attempted to create the most despicable of all literary characters. The book begins with a rant that, had I not agreed to review the novel, would have had me tossing this one aside. If you are Jewish, German, French, Italian, or female and are sensitive to vitriol, the opening pages might offend you greatly. In point of fact I must admit that as the pages roll on the reader can see that stereotypes of prejudices are being played upon, and the reader begins to perceive the shape of a truly reprehensible character and ceases for the most part to be offended personally. The one thing which continued to cause me a fair measure of unease as I read is the virulent anti-semitism. I know that distrust and dislike of the Jewish people has been rampant throughout European history, and I realize that the plot of this novel centers around events purportedly reactionary to those anti-semitic feelings. However, the hatred is so much at the forefront of this book, that it almost made me the reader feel complicit by continuing to read. The foreknowledge that that is the author's intent does not make me feel any less uncomfortable.

The device of a split personality is interesting, and works with the conspiracy theory nature of the plot. As for the plot, the reader is told up front that the book is created from real historical figures (only the main character and a few very minor ones are not drawn from actual people), and the plot structure is based on factual events with many conspiracy theories interwoven. The time frame in question is the later half of the nineteenth century, the setting is Italy, and the characters include Garibaldi and his Redshirts. Conspiracy theory is a fascination of mine, and I trusted Eco to write it well. This is the point where I must admit that I only made it to page 153 of 467. I went to the library last night and browsed through the Italian history books related to this era, hoping to demystify the plot somewhat by familiarizing myself with the players and events. Then I curled up again with the book, hoping my further education would make the book more accessible. After a couple of hours I put the book down and came to a decision-I must read a complete nonfiction work about the time, place, and people in question in order to fully understand and enjoy the conspiracy theories which Eco weaves through them. Too much is assumed by the author with regards to this reader's knowledge of Italian history. I wonder perhaps, given that Eco writes in Italian for Italians, if this knowledge is basic to their curriculum, and it only becomes an issue in translation for foreigners.

At the moment I have given the book three stars, for I simply can not give a master of the pen like Eco any less. My plan is to read, in the next few months, [B]The Making of Italy, 1815-1870[/B] by Edgar Holt, a readable, concise work covering the events of Eco's book, and then re-read this book by Eco. If you do not mind feeling a little lost in your history/conspiracy theories, or if you know a sufficient amount of the time and place in question, and if you love deep, dark novels, this will likely be your kind of read. Otherwise, I would approach this one with caution and preparation.

Umberto Eco is a very smart man- and his fiction never lets you forget it. He creates "erudite " novels full of facts and ideas which are very impressive and oftentimes interesting, as in Foucault's Pendulum and The Name of the Rose. Unfortunately The Prague Cemetery falls way short, and as a result it is more a vanity display of an intellectual writer's breadth of knowledge than an engrossing, thought provoking narrative.

The basic premise is promising, and I looked forward to reading the book. Eco looks at all the "strange" things happening in the latter half of the 19th century, especially as they involved supposed conspiracies involving Freemasons, Jesuits, Satanists, and especially the Jewish race and using a fictional character who is a master forger and sometimes spy/informant for various agencies and institutions as the nexus, he weaves a tale which seeks to tie them all together, with his protagonist as the glue.

The problem is that while the historical facts and personages are bizarre and interesting, the main character, the linchpin, is not. In fact, though Eco weaves a complicated tale around him which includes split personalities, misogyny and ridiculously detailed dining, I found myself not caring about him at all. His rants against Jews become tiresome after a while, and downright tedious by the end, which undermines the story which culminates in his fabricating the infamous Protocols of the Elder of Zions, a fraudulent document which nonetheless contributed greatly to the Antisemitism which would help bring the Nazis to power.

I am sure Eco realized his character would not be sympathetic, nor did he want him to be, but the problem is that he is just boring- and that is a drawback which cannot be overlooked in assessing the novel.

The other problem is that while the Antisemitism depicted was very real, it is so contrary to the modern day sensibility of most of us that it becomes uncomfortable reading about it from the point of view of someone who advocates it. I am sure Eco thought that by creating a character who seems to hate everyone equally he had found a way to structure this novel so that he could present his belief that much of reality is fictional constructs seized upon by the unthinking or unwitting multitudes and hence made real [a thought which he also wrote about in Foucault's Pendulum]. Unfortunately his attempt fizzles and while the premise is provocative, the presentation fails.

Another major problem with this book is its complicated structure which includes flashbacks and multiple narration lines, and Eco realized this and even added a timeline at the back of the book. Its mere presence is an acknowledgement of the confusion you will have trying to keep up with the story.

And so I find myself disappointed by this latest book by someone I consider one of the more unique writers of our time. This will have to be considered a missed opportunity- while Eco's aim at this material was worthwhile, the weapon he chose fails to hit home and as a result you will feel as if this hunting trip was essentially a waste of time.

'The Prague Cemetery' covers familiar ground for Umberto Eco, the strange underworld of secret societies and conspiracies and alternative history. The odious protagonist Simonini stalks through the history of 19th century Europe, using his skills as a forger to assist a range of political and religious agendas. This culminates in the production of one of the most famous literary hoaxes of all time, 'The Protocols of the Elders of Zion'. In this way we can see the Jews gradually become the focus of the fears and hatred of Simonini and all of Europe, the ultimate scapegoats. The atmosphere of anger and paranoia that fostered the conclusion that a 'final solution' was required is chilling to enter into.

While like all of Eco's work this is full of fascinating ideas and allusions, and a clever construction whereby the story unfolds through a process of self-administered Freudian therapy, I found it to be ultimately unsatisfying. It seems to me that this is largely because there is really not a strong plot or driving narrative. Simonini's amnesia is a device that creates a 'plot' of a kind through the gradual revelation of his life history, but this is too artificial and there is no reason to keep turning the pages apart from interest in the historical events and ideas. And since there is in fact intrinsic interest in the subject matter I was inclined to read through, but not compelled by any means.

That aside, this is a unique novel of ideas and interesting characterisation that immerses the reader in a strange and dark part of history which we hopefully will not be forced to repeat.

This engrossing novel, whose protagonist, a psychopath active in Italy and France just before the 20th century begins, immerses the reader into the darkest currents of prejudice exemplified by the Dreyfus Affair and The Protocols of Zion, in which our protagonist swims without scruple. Possessed of multiple personality disorder, reflective of society at large, and by turns a forger of incriminating documents, double spy, and faux clergyman, our protagonist embodies the evils that ultimately inspired and facilitated Hitler’s Final Solution years later. Based upon documentary research, Eco’s almost matter-of-fact story fascinates us with a convincing picture of how lies proliferate and undermine civilization to this day.

Anyone who knows something about the history of the Holocaust has thought about how it could have been possible for anti-Semitism to grow so virulent and obsessive that it resulted in an all-encompassing attempt to obliterate the Jewish people. Umberto Eco's deeply disturbing novel throws a light on the seething history that laid the groundwork. (Though this is called a novel, Eco tells us that except for the protagonist, Simonini, and a few minor characters, the characters and most of the events described are factually valid.)

In a dense and complex plot, Eco places Simonini, a deeply misanthropic, gluttonous and venal forger, at the center of conspiracies in late 19th-century Europe that pit royalists, republicans, Freemasons, Jesuits, Catholics, Protestants and other groups against each other in ruthless efforts to gain primacy. Simonini disdains sex, friendship, loyalty, faith and any kind of moral code other than self-interest. His only love is that of food, and the book is filled with mouth-watering descriptions of mostly Parisian cuisine, which are jarringly disconcerting, as they are nearly always given as asides while Simonini is in full flow of a near-hysterical rant against one group or another.

After several years being at the beck and call of amoral secret police agencies in Italy and France, creating forged documents for them to use against the enemy of the moment, Simonini decides that what he needs is a way to accumulate a principal sum of 300,000 francs, the interest from which will keep him in comfort for life.

Through his experiences, Simonini has come to realize a key truth, which is that people will always believe a conspiracy theory that confirms their own prejudices; i.e., reinforces what they already "know." The most successful conspiracy stories, he tells us, re-use familiar tales. But how to devise a conspiracy story that will be a real money maker? He wants something that he can sell to the widest possible market. The answer is to devise a conspiracy story that can be made to appeal to royalists, republicans, socialists, Freemasons, Jesuits, and the various state and papal powers alike. To accomplish that, he decides that the central villain in the story must be the Jews.

Simonini spins old legends into the document that becomes the infamous Protocols of the Elders of Zion, that appalling fiction about a worldwide Jewish conspiracy to rule the world that was widely republished and circulated in the early part of the 20th century, including by America's Henry Ford.

Though Eco's work here is masterful and riveting, it's impossible to read about such incorrigible hatefulness without feeling sick. The never-ending fulminations of Simonini and other characters--and the reader's knowledge that the hatred and conspiracy theories just went on and on until they climaxed in the orgy of the Holocaust---is emotionally exhausting. Then you think of the people in today's world who are just as cynical and venal as Simonini, and the hordes of people who swallow the same vile libels, and it's unutterably depressing. But Eco's genius is that he so successfully puts the reader in the head of Simononi and the other depraved characters he deals with, and makes one feel the pulse of this tumultuous time in history.

You will never re-read this book. You will never recommend it to anyone. You will eagerly anticipate reading something as different from it as possible as soon as you can. And yet, it must be acknowledged that it is an impressive achievement and an essential work, of particular interest to anyone who is a student of modern European history.

Umberto Eco's latest book is about a disagreeable wretch living at the end of the 19th century who hates women and Jesuits but saves most of his scorn and wrath for Jews, about whom you will hear plenty during the course of this book. Simonini, the main character, is a spy and forger for the secret service of several countries and spends his days making up documents about the people he hates and trying to foment trouble among various competing groups during a time of political ferment. The book appears to be very well researched and is, of course, well-written (it's Eco, after all), but the central character is someone you don't really want to spend much time with, and while he's certainly interesting in a way, being a murderer as well as a forger and a spy, he grows wearisome with his tirades. There must have been, in a 450 page book, 50 pages dedicated to nothing but anti-Jewish screeds that wore me out.

The central conceit of the book is also wearying. Simonini appears to have lost his memory for reasons we don't understand for most of the book, and he is writing what he *does* remember in an attempt to reconstruct who he is and what he is about. In addition to amnesia he is suffering from multiple personality disorder and occasionally thinks he is a monk whom he killed some years earlier. There was no real reason for any of this except perhaps to add color; a diary format with Simonini's life would have told his story just as well without the needless complications of amnesia and mental illness.

I found myself, after 200 pages, simply skipping over the anti-Semitic ranting and ditto for the hate against women. Eco stated that he wanted to create a vile character, and in this he succeeds, but this character is not particularly witty, clever or interesting, though he gets himself in some interesting scrapes as the book goes by. I read the whole thing (minus rants, as noted above) just to see if it got better as it went along, and my feeling was, it didn't. This is sub-par Eco, a minor work, and unless you're really into Eco you can probably give it a miss and not cheat yourself of much.

When one picks up an Umberto Eco book, they already know what to expect: an abundance of conspiracies and a whole passel of obscure historical references that require research in order to fully vet out their meaning. In the past, that has meant that someone without the patience to follow Eco's hints and explorations found his books frustrating at best, and inaccessible at worst. The good news is that accessibility is not an issue with The Prague Cemetery. This book is easily Eco's most understandable for the neophyte. One only needs a tiny bit of knowledge of such items as the Dreyfus Affair and Giuseppe Garibaldi's role in the Italian War for Independence to understand the story. That doesn't mean that addition research into Eco's references (particularly the more obscure ones, like the Taxil hoax) isn't recommended. In fact, reading The Prague Cemetery with Google/Wikipedia nearby will greatly enhance the book's experience. But, it does mean that, unlike other Eco books, such research isn't necessary to obtain a basic understanding of the plot.

This accessibility is welcome, because it allows the reader to enjoy watching Eco put together the "jigsaw puzzle" of conspiracies into one coherent whole. If it weren't for Eco's comments at the beginning of the book that all the book's characters (except for the main protagonist) are actual people who said/did the words/actions depicted in The Prague Cemetery, one would be certain that most of the book was fiction. The fact that all the historical elements blend so seamlessly is a testament to Eco's encyclopedic knowledge and his ability to convey that knowledge in a convincing manner.

Yet, while it's easy to be awed by Eco's intellectual gymnastics, the overall story is not greater than the parts that make it up. Much of the reason for that shortfall has to do with the way Eco introduces his protagonist. Before the first 100 pages are up, the reader fully understands the protagonist's motivations/influences for his actions, and methods he uses to undertake those actions. Without further evolution of the main character's motivations, the book's only drama comes from watching Eco use his main character to tie together seemingly unconnected events.

The Prague Cemetery sits in the middle of Eco's canon of novels: better than the The Island of the Day Beforeand Baudolino, not as good as Name of the Rose and Foucalut's Pendulum. While it is easier to understand than his weaker novels, it lacks the effortless merging of historical fact and literary drama that distinguishes his best works. In the end, The Prague Cemetery mirrors its protagonist: it's relatively easy to understand, but it's not easy to like.

If you've tried to read his other novels you may have scratched your head. Eco has a very enjoyable reading style but his plots tend to be near unintelligible. Until now. Yes, you might find yourself getting just a little lost from time to time, but for the most part this is a book of historic intrigue -- with the main character, Simonini, acting as a double spy, willing to do anything if the price, and the food, was right. But even more intriguing is that we're introduced to his mysterious 'other half,' so throughout the book, he's trying to figure out why this man is tormenting him.

Add to the mix Simonini's grandfather's legacy -- anti-Semitism -- and we begin to see, along with the real historic events Eco has embedded here, how that attitude became so extreme during Hitler's time. Eco makes no apology for history. He is not trying to be politically correct. Now that might only be the freedom of being an Italian author. But finding a book like this that tells it like it was is refreshing. We need this kind of historic fiction.

I especially liked Simonini as a virginal male -- romance in this novel is basically non-existent, or when alluded to, rather quirky.

The book is so filled with politics, religion and conspiracy that you'd need a diagram to keep the plot straight, at times, but the writing style and subject matter is so fascinating that you'll be willing to go along for the ride if you like controversy and a real feeling to your fiction. And the ending is perfect.

The setting is the late 1800s in Italy but he flashes back to earlier times so that we end up there again. Along with destroying monarchs, making fun of Freemasons and Catholics, the real target is Judaism. If you want to be more informed on how terrible humans can be to each other, Eco provides it here. As he says in the introduction - only Simonini is fictional. The rest happened.

In the prologue to The Prague Cemetery, author Umberto Eco says that he wished to create the 'most cynical and nasty character of all literature'. He has succeeded in spades with Captain Simone Simonini, master forger, thief, and murderer. Simonini is anti almost everyone - Germans, Italians, French, Free masons, Jesuits, women , but he retains his greatest hatred for the Jews - not that he actually knows many Jews, of course, but, then, who needs to know a group of people to hate them.

The book is set during the turbulent years of the mid- 19th century and, according to Eco, everything in the novel is based on history, except, of course, Simonini himself (although he is supposedly the grandson of a real man). The plots, counter-plots, bombings, and executions actually occurred but, in this black comedy of a novel, Simonini, is always lurking somewhere in the background in every case, stirring things up and leaving a swath of destruction in his wake. He works as an agent for anyone who can pay - at times, he is working simultaneously for opposing forces - he falsifies documents against the Masons for the Jesuits and against the Jesuits for the Masons.

In this novel, Simonini is the man behind some of the most famous and damaging documents of all times; he forges the documents that condemned Dreyfus and, worse, he is the man behind the most pernicious of all forgeries, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a document used to justify many pogroms against the Jews throughout eastern Europe during the end of the 19th and the first decades of the 20th centuries and would eventually be used by Hitler to justify the Final Solution. It also provided the title for this novel.

The Prague Cemetery is not always an easy novel to read - for people who have little or no knowledge of the historical background (eg Garibaldi and the unification of Italy), it can seem downright daunting at times. However, the background history is really of less importance than the plots and counterplots that were being hatched at the time and which are the basis for Eco's message that history is full of these half-truths and outright lies and nothing should be taken at face-value. Because something is written down doesn't make it true. And Eco makes his case with great glee, much black humour, and a great amount of compassion for the victims of all these lies.

Not for nothing, this historical novel by Umberto Eco is 444 pages of unadulterated hatred! It encompasses approximately 40 years or so of the late 1800's in Europe. It mostly involves Italy, France, Germany and Russia, along with each countries infighting and subversive attacks against each other. Most of these assaults are based on forged documents meant to cause perplexities among Catholics, Jews, Freemasons, Jesuits, and the common populist. However the main focus is to eliminate the Jews from the face of the Earth. The counterfeit papers of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion became ammunition for Adolph Hitler to attempt the unimaginable elimination of an entire race of people. The idea was also aided by the Ottoman Empire's try at genocide on Turkey's Armenian residents during and after World War I.

The narrator of this story, Captain Simonini is the only character that Eco says is fictitious, all the rest are real historical people with a few minor exceptions. It seems our Captain Simonini is also Abbe Dalla Piccola! So what we have here is a main character with a multiple personality disorder that is an acquaintance of Dr. Sigmund Froide ( Freud ). Our Captain Simonini is also Chief forger and spy for many governments receiving and issuing false accusations against each other and the 'devilish' masonic Jews. He also ( on page six ) says " I have known Germans, and even worked for them: the lowest conceivable level of humanity. A German produces on average twice the feces of a Frenchman".

This is a very difficult book to read, it offers no respites or reprieves to catch your breath. The many years of false attacks against the Jews resulted in later year writings such as Hitler's Mein Kampf, which highlighted the supposed Jewish conspiracy to control the world and Karl Marx's The Communist Manifesto, which displays the disharmony between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Although this is the second "eye-opening" book I've read recently, I find it difficult to believe wholly, only because this slant was not taught during my school years.

This is the first Eco work that I've read, and I did like his writing style with most of the story summarized from a diary. Eco is known as a medievalist and semiotician writing some books about the Knights Templar. I did like the book, but wouldn't recommend it to everyone. If this is truly historical fiction, then it shouldn't be so ambiguous without any author notes to back up his findings. The charges against the real characters are too harsh not to be backed up by documentation from other studies, even though this is a novel.

Can a novel about evil and hate be entertaining? In the competent hands of Umberto Eco, the answer is yes when it comes to his latest novel, The Prague Cemetery. Eco sets the novel in the tumultuous late 19th century, and all the characters except the protagonist are historical. That protagonist is the scheming, evil, hateful Simonini who gives voice and action to a wide range of vitriol and plots. An equal opportunity figure, Simonini hates Jesuits, Masons, Russians, Germans, French, and blames the Jews for everything. What Eco accomplishes in this portrayal of hate and evil is to give readers goose bumps that such evil lives among us now. Readers who like to think when we read are those most likely to enjoy this finely written novel.

Rating: Four-star (Highly Recommended)

From the Bavarian Illuminati, through the Paris Commune and other revolutionary currents including anarchism, through the Palladian Order hoax of a vast Satanic conspiracy inside Freemasonry, to the Dreyfus affair and The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, this historical novel by Umberto Eco combines conspiracies, conspiracy theories, and conspiracy theory hoaxes, all into a single satiric thread giving the "true" explanations of notable events.

Should appeal to fans of the "secret history" genre of Robert Anton Wilson, Thomas Pynchon, Dan Brown, and Eco's own prior masterpiece in this genre, Foucault's Pendulum.

I'd read 2 previous Umberto Eco novels, and had a hell of a time figuring out what he was actually saying. I'd sworn Eco off, and then saw the intriguing Prague Cemetery. 3rd time's a charm, and all that - I found that this one made sense in a manner of speaking. Ironically, it was also my LEAST favorite of the 3.

A pointless triple narration, too many characters, too many intrigues (most of which, I might add, you really only get a cursory look at through the veil of indirect action spawned by the forger). By the halfway point, I simply stopped caring. Perhaps it was because I was not terribly familiar with the events of 19th century Europe. That theory doesn't hold water, though, because I've read other historical fiction that made me want to learn more about the events. Prague Cemetery did not.

It took me an entire week to finish off the last 50 pages; presented with the choice of reading this book vs doing the crossword in the paper, I chose the latter more often than not. I wonder if he's better in Italian.

An amazing (and true) story of the origin of the infamous "Protocols of the Elders of Zion," told in a rather overheated style. In the effort to recreate the conditions of life in 18th century Paris and Italy, the author forces the reader to imbibe all kinds of delicacies, quaff liquors, and endure miserable street conditions, in an over-drama whose story becomes submerged in too many sordid details.

This book is not a walk in the park. It is better if the reader is well versed in 19th century European History. The book is complex and harps on the dark side of that era. Two principal themes are anti Jewish and anti Masonic ideas that are common in Europe during that time. Mix in a little Satanism and a dash of murder and you have the recipe for this book. The book does seem to ramble at times and uses many foreign language statements without translation but when I finished it I thought overall it was a rewarding experience. But, this is not a book for the faint of heart.

What an intelligent and creative way of storytelling, weaving mysteries and history seamlessly! It is not the easiest story to follow unless you are familiar with the 19th century European history, but if you are not, this would be even more rewarding and entertaining to read since you will learn so much while riding the rollercoaster of that era.

Umberto Eco basically weaves a tale centered around one fictional character amid the real history of the publication and creation of a conspiratorial text that has influenced conspiracy theorists for ages. This novel is good but fails to capture the seemingly magical touch his earlier works had, that seemed to transport you to the place and time he was writing about. I would recommend this book, but if your just beginning your journey into Umberto Eco's works start with his earlier novels.

I have read each of Eco's prior novels repeatedly, and am quite fanatical about them. This latest one certainly ranks among the others, though not at the top, in my estimation. It may, however, be an ideal starting point for someone new to his work. It is his shortest, and I believe it is his "easiest" novel. The subject matter, while grim, has much contemporary relevance, so the reader should be readily drawn in. I read it nonstop as soon as it arrived, and have been through it maybe five times at this point; bear this in mind as I proceed to criticize it.

Various observations: the novel dramatizes the fabrication of the infamous Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and therefore the storytelling is more constrained by facts than in any of Eco's earlier novels. Also the book is unique in Eco's corpus in that it is told mainly through the eyes of the villain, resulting in less humor than you'll find in any of the earlier books. I suspect that for all his study of this fraud and its perpetrators, Eco simply can't sympathize with and thereby fully inhabit his main character. So he sidesteps the problem through meta-narrative trickery, reusing both the doppelgänger motif from The Island of the Day Before, and the quest for lost memories Macguffin from The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana. Readers of Foucault's Pendulum will already know the historical facts behind the Protocols, and the factual material presented there is only fleshed out a little further here, not substantially added to. The gastronomic details were rather odd, they seemed out of place, though the episode with Alexander Dumas making turtle soup was funny enough to redeem these sometimes off-putting digressions. Thematically, The Prague Cemetery is the flip side of Foucault's Pendulum; the earlier novel (Eco's best, IMO) deflates conspiracy theories, while this one might scare you into hiding under your bed.

One last point, the audiobook version is excellent, George Guidall is the perfect reader in this material. However, the book has illustrations, so I recommend that my fellow fanatics get both.

The Prague Cemetery is the ultimate conspiracy ... and it's all true.

All the characters in Prague exist--with the exception of the narrator, the evil mastermind behind the conspiracy.

Many readers will be put off by the protagonist; he is, after all, an anti-Semitic. He is also anti-German, anti-French ... just about anti-everything. A despicable character. But like Archie Bunker, he shows us the utter ridiculousness of bigotry.

Tightly plotted, at times hilarious, Prague is set in nineteenth century Europe, where Eco takes us behind the conspiracy to show the reader plots, Black masses and massacres, leaving us to wonder what conspiracists are walking among us today.

This is Eco at his devious best; he puts to shame Dan Brown. But a translation is only as good as its translator and Richard Dixon can only be lauded for this translation into English.

Bravo!

One of those writers for whom the writing is as important as the content. So much of what floods the book market is just ...blech. Eco and writers like him give that extra that most books lack. Most stories lack. Most writers lack.

A word of caution here, though: if you're looking for a quick summer (or winter, whatever!) read, perhaps this isn't the book. If you're looking for something where you don't have to think while you read and only need to remember 5-7 words, plus or minus a couple, then it might not be what you are looking for.

If, on the other hand, those are what you find (mostly, there are notable exceptions) while looking for something to actually 'read', then this might be your book! If you've read Eco, you know. If not...get the Kindle app (or better yet, a Kindle!) and read the free sample.

My bet is you'll be buying the full book later that night.

Umberto Eco has written a detailed historical novel about 19th Century Europe chronicling the chaos of expanding international communication. Information became the gold standard of political and economic competition. It was often manipulated with biased reporting and the creation of fictional events. When the sound and the fury reached a critical level, all that was needed was a scapegoat to unite power brokers with a common thread.

The novel is a story of an Italian man living in Paris who developed proficiency in the art of reporting and creating information, a transmission agent involved in the many conspiracies of governments, religions, and private organizations. Simonini is a historical lynchpin whose personality is the result of the views of his grandfather and father who taught him to stereotype people, usually in a negative way.

In his diary,Simonini writes about his upbringing and adventures as a forger, writer of fictional accounts, conversational manipulator, and gourmand. He writes that historical factions and intrigues come and go, but the anti-Semitic stereotype remains valuable in both his writer-for-hire work and his private thoughts. He describes his greatest work as a fictional account of a meeting by Jewish elders in a Prague cemetery where they developed a plan to take over the world. Jewish people, because of their education and training, could infiltrate and ultimately control all aspects of Western life. Since they hide their Jewish identity, their infiltration, when described in official documents, is taken as frightening evidence of a grand Jewish conspiracy. By manipulating information about clandestine activities, Simonini helps to increase the ever present anti-Semitism related to hatred of bankers and other holders of privilege. Simonini's self-serving actions set the stage for "the final solution" of the Jewish problem in the middle 20th Century.

This very interesting novel is complex in its historical detail and it takes some time to understand the wheeling and dealing activities of conflicting parties. Mr. Eco includes a time-line for following incidents in the diary. He also includes a narrator to explain some of Simonini's diary contents. I found the events in the novel to be remarkably similar to 21st Century information misdirection and nefarious plots that have led us to the brink of world chaos. Much of the world now continues to blame the Jewish people for economic and social problems. We see Western politicians and journalists acting like Simonini in their reinforcement of this anti-Semitism. Are we encouraging another "final solution?"

The Prague Cemetery is an excellent novel for readers who enjoy rich and complex historical detail and the humor and self-serving motivation of interesting characters. The novel is similar in theme to The Name of the Rose in its focus on the power of the written word.

I think all the readers, those who liked the book and those who did not, are right.
I always placed Umberto Eco's first book in English, The Name of the Rose, as the greatest tour de force of a detective novel ever. It's fantastically twisted, and written in a manner that's way different than any novel: mystery or otherwise: a spellbinding achievement. I was not that keen on Foucault's Pendulum, although the clear, voluptuous writing was the shining beacon in an otherwise average tale.
Now to the Prague Cemetery. I ordered (from the store UK)the British First Edition published just before the American. I am not sure if the American version has the fascinating illustrations, but they certainly add to the attractions of the book, and most of them from the Author's collection; giving an indication of Mr. Eco's mindset.
Now some readers have been disgusted or upset by the contents of the book: which is the most virulent antisemitic writing that I have come across in a non-antisemitic literary form. I think people are upset that Mr. Eco does not specify in the beginning, it's a work of fiction based on a piece of literary forgery that epitomized the world's attitude towards the Jewish race. That would have been giving away the entire plot. As it is, everyone knows and probably looked up in Wikipedia, what the Protocols of Elders of Zion is all about: and then the title, The Prague Cemetery will become clear. The narrator (as opposed to the narrator observing the Narrator)is clearly in a playful mood as he names the rabbis buried in the cemetery and starts making up the protocols.
For me, Simonini's antisemitism (cleverly ascribed to a dead grandfather and excuse for a nice flash back) is the funniest part of the book. Funny? Yes, hysterically so. From describing every known antisemitic statements ever put on paper, he goes on to vilify the French, Germans, Church, Women in a manner of comic literature that's beyond anything I have read in a long time. These are the first 24 pages. 'Give me a break, Mr. Eco,' I said aloud, 'you are funny and this is going to be a masterpiece.'
Alas, the wit and intensity of the intial part (first 100 pages or so)fades quickly.
Mr. Eco is widely read: Eugene Sue (his Wandering Jew: although his book deals with descendants of the Wandering Jew : the one who turned away from crucified Jesus carrying the Cross to Calvary) and varius Dumas novels with similar themes. No, I never read Sue (excpet part of his famous but horrifying The Mysteries of Paris) or Dumas (beyond the Three Musketeers and the two sequels) and the many authors and works he talks about. After Garibaldi and unification of Italy, which he weaves into an unnecessary side trip to the Prague Cemetery, he touches of various social and political problems of France, he goes to the infamous Dreyfuss Case. The Dreyfuss Affair as it was known, with the Dryfusards and the AntiDryfusards taking aim at each other and Emile Zola fleeing to England ( 'in itself an admission of guilt')takes place at the very end of the book and revives interest but it's over too quickly at that point. I know something about Dreyfuss and very little about Garibaldi and Italy of his time, and that might be why my interest was revived.
Yet that is in the heart of the question of this book. So we know the Russians in 1902 or thereabouts actually published the Protocols as a real book, knowing fully well it was a forgery (they encouraged the retelling of the existing forgeries). Riding on the high road of literaure and effortless writing, one cannot but forget the low road of where all of this leads to?
As the author points out: except for Simonini, all the other characters are real and historical. True but their presence does not always add to the plot. Why was Freud even there? Just to explain (through self-hynosis) the dual nature of the narrator? Mr. Eco has created a sprawled canvas without exactly knowing where to put all the pieces on it or in what proportion. Most important, he has not idea how to present the final picture.It's a gorgeous paiting without a theme or a frame. The shadowy interplay, the murders and the hidden bodies and a very derivative Black Mass description at the end, beg the question:why write a book like this? It might serve as a condemnation of the Protocols but in this day and age, it is merely gilding the lily. No reasonable person in his right mind, even considers the Protocols of the Elders of Zion anything other than fiction of a most despicable kind.
But I read the book, parts of it more than once, just as a tribute to a great writer in need for a plot. It is a work of art as far as writing goes, but with a big question mark about the content!
Like a beautiful collection of paper flowers.

Eco (yet again) plunges into the soft political underbelly of Italy and France in an undertaking that is half serious half mockery. Satire allows him to point at facts that are mostly unpalatable these PC days. Similar to their preeminent roles in Wall Street, hedge funds and private equity firms of today, Jewish bankers seem to have dominated finance in pre- and post-Republican France, Italy, Prussia, tsarist Russia, Northern Africa and elsewhere. Their overwhelming financial resources and political influence antagonized both Catholic church (with Jesuits as its militant arm) and secular forces represented by Freemasonry. Anyone who was anybody in 19th century Italy and France was affiliated with one of these three sources of power. Catholics in turn saw their mortal enemy in Freemasons, and vice versa. Both used Jews as a foil with which to attack their enemy, a tendency with terrible consequences in post-Weimar Germany.

Eco delves into secret services archives, correspondences, feuilletons of the day (where the heck does he get them?) to construct a fantastic spy tale that ties together secular, religious and financial sources of power represented by Freemasons, Jesuits and Jews. Not satisfied with a regular James Bond, he invents a forger/spy/glutton/murderer with a split personality and an effortless ability to navigate between Russian, Prussian, Bonapartist, Garibaldian underworlds. The rascal's lack of morals and scruples are designed to be entertaining especially when combined with his culinary foibles yet they cynically echo and reverberate the author's political and semiotic interests & hobbies. Although the book is ostensibly about Jews one hardly encounters a live Israelite - only their shadows and simulacra. Eco uses these shadows as building blocks which reconstruct the famous Protocols of Zion forgery involving French and Russian secret services in cahoots with masons and priests. Jews, while an object of contempt for Eco's protagonists are also a source of endless fascination: how could a (small) ethnoreligious group exert such control over public and private finances, education, academia and the media of the European continent (which at that time included Russia)? Similar questions might be asked today regarding the central roles that Jewish bankers, media personalities, scientists and artists play in contemporary life. it would seem that questions posed by Eco's characters invert those successes into tools for ideologues seeking to profit from knee-jerk envy that has for centuries blamed Jews for the relative lack of financial savoir faire of the gentiles.

The book flows well in the beginning but, similar to Foucault's Pendulum, loses steam by the end; the author desperately tries to bring together field notes on French secret services, Okhrana, freemason Black Masses and conspiracy theories but does not really succeed. Despite occasional tedium there is much to learn here, however. As demonstrated by Nancy Reagan's astrologers, the occult has always been just under the thin skin of Western political life. Eco steps on many toes and it's easy to see the old polymath's devilish smile as he cooks a soup that may be hard to swallow for the PC crowd.

Eco is great. the book is a little ponderous at times, but the character keeps sucking you in, despite being absolutely despicable. The excellent historical references make this book an even more interesting read. It's not Name of the Rose, but what book is?.

I gave up at around page 100. I know I'm no genius, but I can usually follow a plot. This book left me cold. Only when I decided to chuck the whole thing, I found a plot guide of sorts at the end of the book. Why wasn't that placed first for dummies like me?

There was too much history which was unknown to me and I just didn't find it enjoyable at all.

For me, "Foucault's Pendulum" is a towering achievement that I can only compare to Nabokov's "Pale Fire." It's playful, erudite, entertaining, mysterious, and cruel in equal measure. While "The Prague Cemetery" is no equal to FP, it is a genuinely engrossing story about a diabolically amoral person smack in the middle of a dozen conspiracies that bloomed in Europe in the last half of the 19th Century. Eco toys with the reader (as he always does), monkeying with the concept of the narrative and the narrator, standing at one or two removes from the story and always reminding us that the concept of authorship is a tricky premise. And like Nabokov, he features a "double" protagonist: in "Lolita," Humbert/Quilty; in Pale Fire," Shade/Kinbote. Here Eco has two figures tell the same story, but their relationship throughout is murky. Do they know each other? Are they related? The omniscient narrator seems to know, but he's not telling.

If you loved "Foucault's Pendulum," this will be catnip to you. All others, steer clear-- as other reviewers have noted, it's a challenging read. Those up to the challenge will reap the reward.

clever weave that portrays the protagonist as being responsible for almost all of the significant anti semitic events and publications in the 19th century
interesting but convoluted read
its (an evil) forrest gump crossed with davinci codes
funny thing is that when I recommended it to avid readers,they all said that they find eco too laborious
perhaps they are correct but eco is brilliant
his detailed descriptions and command of the material are exquisite

Simply, a masterpiece. In THE PRAGUE CEMETERY, Umberto Eco proves that in literature he is like a fine tailor, able to weave a suit from a single thread. His premise, what if the seminal events of the 19th century had their roots, their inspiration, from a single man? That man, Simone Simonini. From this Italian notary turned forger, we are treated to Eco's treatment of Italy's Risorgimento, the Dreyfus Affair, The Paris Commune, and the anti-Semitic work, "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion."

Simonini is a perfectly despicable character, a misogynistic glutton who loathes everyone and every nationality. He can and does find fault with the French, Germans, Italians, though he reserves a special distaste for the Jews. Simonini is the perfect platform to explain the rampant anti-Seminism that plagued Europe from the middle of the 19th century, a direct line to "The Final Solution." "Odi egro sum. I hate therefore I am."

He is not a sympathetic character. In fact, the reader is hard pressed to find any sympathetic characters. Simonini's driving force, fueled by his prejudice, is sheer avarice. He has no moral compass, does not feel strongly about any cause or political philosophy. He merely wants money to fund his hedonistic lifestyle.

What is singularly impressive about this book is that all of the characters with the exception of Simonini actually existed, and the circumstances described in THE PRAGUE CEMETERY occurred. As implausible as Leo Taxil, a mountebank of stunning stature, may appear, he not only lived, but actually continuously duped Jesuits, Masons, and the leading newspapers of the day. Golovinsky, the Ohkrana operative historically identified as the midwife of "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" (this masterful forgery credited with "inspiring" Adolf Hitler's MEIN KAMPF), makes an appearance.

THE PRAGUE CEMETERY is a complex book. Wikipedia replaced Cliff's Notes as Eco introduces characters and circumstances that bear further research. Wonderful, rich, oddly humorous, enhanced by scores of etchings, most from the author's private collection, THE PRAGUE CEMETERY could be the best book of the year.

Eco is back with an account of the creation of one of the world's most notorious forgeries, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

His protagonist is a hate-filled, schizophrenic, misogynistic gastronome who, in the hands of a lesser writer, would be laughably improbable.

Long passages of the book consist of rants against the Jews, the Freemasons, the Jesuits and various nationalities. These become increasingly strident and tedious as the story proceeds. The characters in the book clearly savor these diatribes, and one almost gets the impression that Eco does, too. Or is it just his narrator? It's all part of the Eco's literary game.

His previous novel along these lines, FOUCAULT'S PENDULUM, is a masterwork of conspiracy theories run amok, and lots of fun. I've read it three times. This book is bleak, and leaves an uneasy aftertaste. I admire it, but will not open it again. Some people ought not to open it at all.

The quote above tells you almost everything you need to know about the protagonist of Umberto Eco's latest novel. Set in 19th century Europe, Captain Simonini is an equal opportunity misanthrope, and early in the novel there's a lengthy diatribe against not only the Jews (always very much at the center of Simonini's hatred), but also the Germans, French, Italians, priests, Jesuits, Masons, women, and several other groups in asides. Simonini expounds, "They say that a soul is simply what a person does. But if I hate someone, and I cultivate this grudge, then, by God, that means there is something inside! What does the philosopher say? Odi ergo sum. I hate therefore I am."

I think it took me about three attempts to make it past these over-the-top opening salvos of hatred, and a smarter reader would have quit, but Eco has defeated me in the past, and I was determined to read this entire book. Why? Why? The Prague Cemetery is a dense, complex, convoluted tour through 19th century European history. (I strongly recommend that you acquire a Ph.D. in the subject before you sit down to read.) Simonini, it seems, is--Forrest Gump-like--at the center of almost all major events, and pretty much behind every conspiracy of the era.

As you may have gathered above, he is not a good guy. At one point he justifies: "Yes, I admit it. In my conduct toward my would-be Carbonari comrades, and to Rebaudengo, I did not act in accordance with the morals you are supposed to preach. But let us be frank: Rebaudengo was a rogue, and when I think of all I have done since then, I seem to have practiced all of my roguery on rogues." Yeah, right.

The novel is an autobiography of sorts, as there is some confusion as to Simonini's identity. He seems to be possibly inhabiting the same apartment? body? mind? as a clergyman named Abbé Dalla Piccola. Simonini's memory is full of holes, which Dalla Piccola seems to be able to fill, as he inserts his own recollections into Simonini's written document. Does this sound confusing? You have no idea. "Abbé Dalla Piccola seems to reawaken only when Simonini needs a voice of conscious to accuse him of becoming distracted and to bring him back to reality, otherwise he appears somewhat forgetful. To be frank, if it were not for the fact that these pages refer to events that actually took place, such alternations between amnesiac euphoria and dysphoric recall might seem like a device of the Narrator."

On the subject of "events that actually took place," pretty much all of the history (if not the stories behind the events) took place, and in fact, according to Eco, Simonini is the only fictional character in the entire novel. So, those European history Ph.D.s are really going to have a field day. For the rest of us, not so much fun, I have to say.

If it's not yet clear, I hated this book. I violently HATED this book! Reading it gave me PTSD. I know, you're wondering why the three stars? Well, as much as I hated it, I can't actually tell you it's bad. Eco is a brilliant, talented writer. I simply can't imagine why he chose to use his talent to tell this particular story. Here are some of the issues I had with the novel:

* The required knowledge of history was oppressive. Without that knowledge, the novel was almost impossible to follow and/or appreciate.
* The cast of thousands, all with multi-syllabic foreign names, was impossible to keep track of, especially as characters would reappear decades after their last appearance in the book.
* Despite the sheer amount of stuff that happens within these pages, the story moves at what, for me, was an excruciatingly slow pace. I'm not actually sure how Eco managed that.
* Not only is the central character a truly awful human being, there really is no one to like or care about much in the book.
* While at first I was able to shrug off the anti-Semitic content of the novel, after 464 pages of the most vile garbage imaginable, it really, really got to me. As a Jew of European descent, no matter how ridiculous and over-the-top the hatred was (from all characters, not just Simonini), I know that everything Eco wrote was very reflective of the attitudes of the era. It made me ill. Make no mistake; I don't believe Mr. Eco is an anti-Semite. I just didn't need to read this hatred. It hurt me.

Umberto Eco is a great writer, but any way you chose to look at The Prague Cemetery, I don't believe to be among his strongest works, and it is certainly not one of his more accessible titles. Despite Mr. Eco's talent, I can't recommend this book to anyone. And it'll be a long time before I decide to read him again.

"If the world hates you, you know that it hated Me before it hated you." -- John 15:18 (NKJV)

At first, I thought I must be reading a book written by a reincarnated Voltaire who had majored in 19th century European history. As someone who did major in 19th century European history in college, I was fascinated to see how many real historical threads masterful novelist Umberto Eco tied together to one fictional character. In his cupidity, antihero Simone Simonini is a perfect reflection of the world he describes in terms of cynically fanning the flames of hate to advance some momentary interest or another. The opening pages are simply stunning in terms of their self-indictment of how little prejudice is usually based on.

From there, I'm sure you'll enjoy reading how many forged documents and "informational" campaigns were based on obscure novels that had been forgotten by many people. I almost fell out of my chair laughing in places while being reminded how many such deceptions were taken from the very same sources.

This book is so rich in history, perspective, and psychology that it could easily become the subject for a doctoral dissertation. I don't remember another modern novel with nearly this much intellectual content . . . put together in such an entertaining way. I agree that it's destined to be considered a masterpiece.

I hope that many young readers will have opportunities to read and to discuss its content in class. Such an investigation will help inoculate them against much of the cynical posturing that today's politicians and opinion makers engage in . . . for their own benefit and for the harm of most everyone else. In that sense, the book will seem at some levels as if it were also describing the 21st century.

Just marvelous! Don't miss it!

This was a terrible disappointment. I did not think I could get bored reading anything written by Umberto Eco; but I was. I did not find the character(s) involving, and the details were boring and distracting instead of inspiring interest. I loved Name of the Rose and Foucault's Pendulum. Hope Eco gets his game back.
False Prophet, a Legal Thriller

Italian author Umberto Eco includes a note to readers pointing out the fact that the 19th century teemed with mysterious and horrible events. At the centerpiece of this is the infamous PROTOCOLS OF THE ELDERS OF ZION, the notorious forgery that later inspired the Dreyfus Case; Hitler; and numerous intrigues involving the secret services of various nations, Masonic sects and Jesuit conspiracies, as well as other episodes that --- were they not documented truths --- would be difficult to believe.

In THE PRAGUE CEMETERY, Eco uses his unique gift of writing about ancient and recent history to recount dozens of events that took place in Europe during the mid- to late-1800s. His principal character, and the only fictional one in the entire book, is Simone Simonini. Among other things, Simone is a spy, forger, glutton and hater of Jews. He is following in the footsteps of his grandfather, a mighty anti-Semite and author of a mysterious actual letter that may have triggered modern anti-Semitism.

What Eco has produced is a novel that exploits conspiracy theories and acts of outright terrorism that are still prevalent fears today. He offers that there will be two kinds of readers who approach this book: those who love historical fiction but have no idea whether or not the events depicted within his story are true, and those who know about these infamous events and has always suspected there may be something more to it. For those readers, Simone Simonini represents the morbid curiosity they feel whenever they are dissecting historical events to find the truth behind the myth.

No one country, person or religious sect is free from scrutiny in this darkly comic and often profane story. Everyone from Jesuits, Freemasons, various Popes and Napoleon himself are subjects of the many tales that are recounted within these pages. Diverse events featuring fabrications, lies and deceit are depicted through various historical storytelling involving black masses, executions and plots to rule the world.

Underneath it all runs the feeling of anti-Semitism that Simone greedily sinks his teeth into as the impetus for the more scandalous events of the 19th century. The midpoint of the novel features the title story of the Prague Cemetery. It is alleged that various rabbis from around Europe gathered at this cemetery in the evening to plot how the Jews would take over the world through both control of the global monetary exchange and the mass media. Arising from these clandestine nocturnal meetings came the most infamous literary forgery in history: THE PROTOCOLS OF THE ELDERS OF ZION. Simone is more than willing to buy into this conspiracy theory. However, as the novel rolls on and more tales of corruption and deceit are raised, Simone begins to suspect the unthinkable. Could the source of all these historical events have been a single individual?

Umberto Eco is a prolific writer having penned dozens of fiction and nonfiction works over the past several decades. He is an author, historian and philosopher who gained world-wide acclaim with his fictional murder mystery THE NAME OF THE ROSE, which was later adapted into a movie starring Oscar winners F. Murray Abraham and Sean Connery. THE PRAGUE CEMETERY combines the full breadth of Eco's talents and experience and has created an instant literary counter-cultural classic that is sure to open up debate and discussion by all who are brave enough to dive in.

Reviewed by Ray Palen

Very good read. Displaying Eco's knowledge of history. With all these conspiracies going on for so long one can (nearly) understand why the Germans behaved so bad during WW2 and why the other countries ignored it and even cooperated. When I lived in Europe (years ago) they always blamed the communists for undermining society and traditional views and now I know who to blame for that now. I hope I do. I wonder.

I liked in the Name of the Rose, however Eco does like to engage the grotesque . This book is grotesque in the extreme, having at its core a description of purveyors of anti-semitism. He describes it as purveyed by governments who wish to distract the mass of people from other issues.

The central anti-hero has no redeeming characteristics whatsoever. The knowledge of the esoteric of the era is very much on display - revolutionaries, Satanism, Freemasons, Secret Services ; as an endnote Eco gives as his opinion that the activities described in the book are happening today. I wonder if this is actually the case, in a broad sense evil exists, but one of the main shivers obtained in reading the book is the awful outcome of the anti-semitism in the first half of the Twentieth Century. I am more inclined to the view that Eco, albeit in a very erudite way, is a Dan Brown fellow-traveller.

On the other hand, I did find the way the story is told - following a Feudian therapy approach to unveil the story and leading the reader forward with an unravelling mystery, which having the main character disparage Feud. I also like the illustrations, which again reminded me a Victorian pot-boiler.

The style kept me reading until the end, but, in retrospect, I felt manipulated.

Umberto Eco's prose always delights, except in this book. He is teaching the reader how vicious rumor and ugly, prejudicial material is created. His hate-filled main characters are so single minded in their anti-Semeticism that they make my skin crawl. While I usually love his writing, this last of Eco's fills me with despair. He intends the reader to be repulsed of course. I'm just not hardy enough to appreciate it.

Umberto Eco has been interested for quite some time in conspiracies. While Foucault's pendulum dealt with the occult, this work takes it to a very delicate subject, I.e. the increase of anti-Semitism in 19th century Europe. A good read, though not an original material from this author.

This complex novel is about conspiracies, populism and plagiarism in 19th century Europe. Its first chapter was an assault on this reader's feelings, a sour fruit to eat and stomach. Its main character is racist and psychotic Simone Simonino (SS) from Turin, later from Paris, a dubious notary, an expert forger of documents, occasional killer and devious spy. SS's diary from 1897, going back to the 1860's and before, forms the backbone of this novel.

Brilliant?
Umberto Eco (UE) provides a raw portrait of Paris and France in the late 19th century. And gives insights into popular sentiments, whereby few nationalities or groups escaped popular distrust and hatred. Popular hate targets included Communists, Freemasons, Jesuits, and especially Jews. Eco's thesis in this novel is that all 19th century accusations and campaigns against these groups were concocted and managed somehow by one man, the plagliarizing SS, who made brilliant use of existing material. Almost everything in this novel is proven by historical facts. The author provides plenty of names, book titles and etchings (from his own vast collection) as evidence. Almost, because SS and his alter ego Abbé Dalla Piccola are Eco's own creations. So is the mysterious storyteller, who cuts short and speeds up SS's diary throughout the novel.

But not thrilling?
In Paris, Simonini, once a minor character in Garibaldi's quest for Italian unity, turns out to be a psychotic and paranoid man focused mainly on cash and good food. He abhors women but is not attracted to men either. The novel relates in great detail countless intrigues, conflicts and wars nobody today is interested in. The psychotic dimension is confusing, slows the novel down and costs the novel stars. Readers may tire from too much repetition of so much, repeated and abundant evidence of prejudice of all sorts. The novel reads like a Ph.D thesis and makes readers struggle: it is also too long to enjoy.

Conclusion
Eco became world famous with "The Name of the Rose", a medieval tale, filmed with Sean Connery in the lead. This book is a brilliant reconstruction about how the infamous "Protocols of the Elders of Zion", which inspired Hitler's "Endlösing", was perhaps collated and put together. Perhaps it is also Eco's response to growing feelings of popular anger and the growing appeal of populist leaders and political parties in today's Europe, their appeal fed by spin doctors and strategists as vile as Simonini. A difficult, tiresome, but morally sound novel.

I'm an old fan of Eco, so I wasn't surprised at the archaic history he packs into this novel. I should have flipped to the back and discovered his claim that everyone but the main character is historical fact. I had to learn this one name, one page at a time. But what a fantastic trip it was. I kept my iphone handy with Wikipedia at the ready. I'm sure I spent 2 hours in Wiki for every hour spent reading. Every name, every historical movement, each battle, each plot - they were all fascinating in and of themselves. Here's a clue for a fact that Eco left out: one of the characters had a co-conspirator that ended up fighting in the U.S. Civil War and was a survivor of the Seventh Cavalry at Little Big Horn! You link name to name to event to movement to counter-movement to a conspirator and then Eco puts that character in play on the next page. It is an absolutely amazing synthesis of historical fact with pure conjecture of correlation and causation. I wish there was more to read. It almost makes me forgive him for his Book of Lists.

I liked in the Name of the Rose, however Eco does like to engage the grotesque . This book is grotesque in the extreme, having at its core a description of purveyors of anti-semitism. He describes it as purveyed by governments who wish to distract the mass of people from other issues.

The central anti-hero has no redeeming characteristics whatsoever. The knowledge of the esoteric of the era is very much on display - revolutionaries, Satanism, Freemasons, Secret Services ; as an endnote Eco gives as his opinion that the activities described in the book are happening today. I wonder if this is actually the case, in a broad sense evil exists, but one of the main shivers obtained in reading the book is the awful outcome of the anti-semitism in the first half of the Twentieth Century. I am more inclined to the view that Eco, albeit in a very erudite way, is a Dan Brown fellow-traveller.

On the other hand, I did find the way the story is told - following a Feudian therapy approach to unveil the story and leading the reader forward with an unravelling mystery, which having the main character disparage Feud. I also like the illustrations, which again reminded me a Victorian pot-boiler.

The style kept me reading until the end, but, in retrospect, I felt manipulated.

Umberto Eco's prose always delights, except in this book. He is teaching the reader how vicious rumor and ugly, prejudicial material is created. His hate-filled main characters are so single minded in their anti-Semeticism that they make my skin crawl. While I usually love his writing, this last of Eco's fills me with despair. He intends the reader to be repulsed of course. I'm just not hardy enough to appreciate it.

Umberto Eco has been interested for quite some time in conspiracies. While Foucault's pendulum dealt with the occult, this work takes it to a very delicate subject, I.e. the increase of anti-Semitism in 19th century Europe. A good read, though not an original material from this author.

I'm an old fan of Eco, so I wasn't surprised at the archaic history he packs into this novel. I should have flipped to the back and discovered his claim that everyone but the main character is historical fact. I had to learn this one name, one page at a time. But what a fantastic trip it was. I kept my iphone handy with Wikipedia at the ready. I'm sure I spent 2 hours in Wiki for every hour spent reading. Every name, every historical movement, each battle, each plot - they were all fascinating in and of themselves. Here's a clue for a fact that Eco left out: one of the characters had a co-conspirator that ended up fighting in the U.S. Civil War and was a survivor of the Seventh Cavalry at Little Big Horn! You link name to name to event to movement to counter-movement to a conspirator and then Eco puts that character in play on the next page. It is an absolutely amazing synthesis of historical fact with pure conjecture of correlation and causation. I wish there was more to read. It almost makes me forgive him for his Book of Lists.

If this was a first novel by a budding author, it would have been a non-starter. But, because it comes with the credentials of Eco, it forces the fans of his earlier books to go through it despite some failings and discover its one redeeming message.

As an example of its failings in writing style, do we really need the author's brain dump of all the cuisine names he can make up or a big paragraph worth of brain-storming on Monty Pythonesque titles for a person? This might make one wonder, as for any of Eco's books, whether he is being paid by the word.

The book contains some well-done illustrations to maintain the illusion of a chronicle based on reality.

People who read too literally will likely hate it after a few pages and throw it into their vast bin of politically incorrect literature.

For those who persevere, it forces them to look at the increasing proliferation of false narratives in contemporary politics and religion describing groups - liberals, conservatives, blacks, whites, Southerners, illegals, Hispanics, Jews, Muslims, Mormons, Catholics, .... It highlights the superficiality and the danger of such narratives forcefully via a composite caricature in the main character - Captain Simonini - who is able to fluently and rapidly create hateful, deceitful, false narratives about any group as long as there is someone willing to pay for it.

Some cynics may see Rupert Murdoch as one who institutionalized and scaled the business model of Captain Simonini for the contemporaneous world - creating media entities that deliver a narrative (true or false) to any echo chamber that wants and is willing to pay for it, without having to take a position on those narratives himself. It is just a business but, as Eco reminds us, with significant consequences on the world.

The message above is the only redeeming value of this novel as the thin plot gets lost several times with no attempt to tie the diversions together into anything of substance or complexity like some of his earlier work. The multiple personality "mystery" seems like a forced literary gimmick that just gets dropped on the way when it has served that purpose.

The title could just as well have been "The Chronicles of a Traveling Narrative Writer". The title - The Prague Cemetery - to tie it to the "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" is coincidental as just one of the false narratives established in the novel, neither a necessary premise nor a climactic reason for the novel. I suppose it just makes for better marketing of the novel by being associated with that historically significant document.

Recommended for Ecophiles only.

The novel is certainly Eco. The tale can get complicated and one must read carefully and be alert to the subtle humor. However, it strikes me more like a history lesson than a novel that one can enjoy without using too much brain power. But, if you read Eco, one knows what to expect.

I have gleaned all over for reviews of "The Prague Cemetary" and each one seems to be incredibly lazy, regurgitating reviews that could have worked on previous Eco novels, but not this one. The book was sub-par for Eco-- a clear effort simply to sell a novel to a pre-existing market-- and unless the author's real work of forgery was manipulating literary critics to believe his novel to be a genuine effort (which would be a work of performance art a la Alan Sokal), I can think of little redeeming in it. It is Foucault's Pendulum rewritten and dumbed down.

The central point of the novel is that the hereditary anti-semitism of Europe is due entirely to a disease of the European brain, rather than any concrete actions of Jews. Once again, the protagonist is a Piedmontese, illustrating that the novel serves as an apologia of sorts for Eco's own visceral anti-semitism. One can feel the guilt, and Eco is perhaps too hard on himself. As in Foucault's Pendulum, the conspiracy is that there is no conspiracy.

As with other Eco novels, the reader is treated to a meandering plot through numerous, well-researched locales. Except, in "The Prague Cemetary," the depth of research is palpably absent. The numerous period illustrations from Eco's personal collection (one may recall "The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana") serve two purposes. First, it helps to echo the serial novel of, e.g., Dumas. Second, and more dubiously, it fluffs the page count and allows Eco to recycle material he has undoubtedly had on hand for some time. Unlike "The Name of the Rose" or "Baudolino," there is no joy of discovery. In writing the novel, I suspect that Eco did not spend as much time or care into research.

But perhaps that is the point. Just as the "Protocols" is, pace Eco, seen as a hodge-podge of old material sent through stupid editorial and publishing channels, perhaps "The Prague Cemetary" is a piece of performance art. Eco recycled old research and an old novel in a new form, selling it to a willing publisher and snowed public. If that is the case, I laud Eco for his experimentation, but as a devotee I was disappointed in the end product. At some point post-modern aesthetics of originality and experimentation must give way to craft. Previously, I respected Eco for his craft. This book casts doubt on that assessment.

And yet, I am too harsh. As Eco ages, how can I expect his stamina to remain unflagging, his creativity unsullied by constant editorial pressure? I only ask that novices to Eco start elsewhere.

I am a real fan of Eco's earlier efforts - Name of the Rose, of course, and Travels in Hyperreality, among others - but this book could not have been a more unenjoyable read for me. The premise - based closely on historical fact - is a good one, but the turgid, pretentious and sloppy story-telling means this was a big miss. At page 300 I was still waiting for it to get better. It never did.

Vladimir Nabokov, an aficionado of Russian literature and in particular Gogol, once commented on Gogol's inability to write the second part for his masterpiece "Dead Souls". Nabokov believed that the main culprit was Gogol's increased reliance on the facts of real life supplied to him by his friends, rather than on his imagination. By contrast, the literary success of Dickens's London and Joyce's Dublin Nabokov attributed to being creative inventions rather than documented reality. The author of Lolita and Ada is known for making extravagant categorical statements, and it is easy to argue that the truth is in a shade of grey rather that in black or white, but in this case I find it hard not to agree and the analogy seems fitting. The Prague Cemetery's detailed account of actual events was accomplished at the expense of artistic beauty. Following historic figures so closely and at the same time bringing about inventive language, memorable characters or unexpected twists of plot seems to be a tall order even for a writer of Ecco's stature.

As Ecco explains in both the prologue and the epilogue, all characters except for the main protagonist are real historic figures, who did and said what is described in the book. The book itself is a conspiracy theory which, according to the preface, should alert the reader that conspirators are still among us. The book did not have the desired effect on me. Mere facts can be dull or fascinating, much depends on the delivery. The book's characters, including the main protagonist, are rather insipid, most appear for a short time and do not betray much emotion or unusual thinking. They feel like props for the delivery of the ideas, the exact opposite of the characters of Dumas, who is repeatedly mentioned and even makes a brief appearance. D'Artagnan and the fellow musketeers are allowed to live a full life on the pages of the book, whereas Nievo, Taxil and perhaps Simonini himself are only there to advance the theory of world conspiracies. Comparisons with the books of Dumas, the author of Great Dictionary of Cuisine, are further enforced by Ecco's descriptions of gastronomic events and recipes. The overt parallels with Dumas feel somewhat awkward and only accentuate The Prague Cemetery's relative lack of color.

The introductory note about the writer's intent on creating the main character "most cynical and disagreeable in all the history of literature" feels like a slip of pen. Captain Simonini appears a mercenary, ready to live by deceit provided he gets paid, but in the game of grand conspiracies a middleman rather than an evil mastermind. His anti-Semitism, misogyny and other varieties of hatred seem more pathetic than sinister. I probably would have liked the book better if he was allowed more agency and given a dose of Professor Moriarti's black magic of plotting, Iago's art of insinuation or brazen self assuredness of Richard III.

I rarely write a review for a book already much-reviewed, but I feel a strong need to say one thing about this book. Reading it made me feel dirty. It is so full of truly nasty anti-Semitic comments, (only by comparison) less nasty comments about Jesuits, Germans, Communists, Freemasons, and any other number of groups, that I felt a need to wash after I read from it. The fact that this is under the disguise of "great" literature allegedly using this filth to fairly describe a psychopath impresses some people, but not me. I don't read for the purpose of polluting my mind.

I rented this book only because I thought it told the history of late 19th-century Italy and France, but it actually does not. It talks about Garibaldi, Victor Emmanuel, the Paris Commune, the Dreyfus case, and other topics I knew a lot about, but if I hadn't, the book wouldn't have helped. It does not elucidate any topic, but just tells of them in the crazy manner of the narrator.

There is no real historical exposition there, there is no suspense there, and I'm tempted to say there is no there there at all.

This review is based on reading about 80% of the book, including the end. I wish I hadn't.

A fabulous romp through the high times of anti-semitism and Napoleonic France by the master of magical realism. This novel gives hope to the future of the novel while making hard comments about the nature of conspiracy and myth-making.

I thought this book would be way more exciting. It is VERY long and therefore it seems to often repeat itself. While the plot is interesting, it is over filled with random and tedious facts of the wars during Napoleon III's reign which get in the way of the story. I was hoping this story would have more action. The alternating point of view story telling can be difficult to follow. If you have plenty of time, such has being trapped in an airport - go ahead and get this book.... if you are looking for action and adventure... DON"T

This is a novel about the manufacture of one of history's most infectious and destructive memes: antisemitism. If you know some European history you'll find it fascinating; if you don't need heroes and can accept the idea of an odious protagonist, you'll find it very entertaining.

Umberto Eco continues on with his vivid portrayal of history through the eyes of a carefully chosen fellow on the edge of said history. I love how he brings history to life and he sticks very well to the first person view (which is always difficult to write).
The deduction of one star is for some of the idiosyncrasies of the characters that detracts from their believability. Casting the main character as having paedophelic tendencies was a stretch too far for me.
If you enjoyed this book, please read Mr Eco's other work - Baudolino - as well. I found that book to be even better.

Most readers of Umberto Eco's new book will have great precedents in his earlier works: the mysterious "Name of the Rose" or the magic "Baudolino". Those are great sagas with all the complexity that characterize the author, but with an engaging and unified plot. Unfortunately, "The Prague Cemetery" disappoints in all these fronts (I was also disappointed by "The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana").

The story follows a man (Simonini) that wakes up with amnesia in late 19th Century Paris. In order to get his memories back, he starts a journal with his biography. Simonin covers a lot of 19th Century History (as Eco explains himself, only the main character is invented, all the rest are historical). This is problematic; it feels rough and strained, with the plot at the service of History and not the opposite. The reader gets lost easily because so much is covered that doesn't really matter, with a consequent lost of interest in the story (I almost dropped it several times). The book has of course some interesting passages (it's Eco after all), but at the end one feels that the story is just a lame pastiche of historical events.

Eco still explores topics that come across in most of his work, including religion, conspiracy theories (Foucault's Pendulum), deception and reality creation, and of course, semiotics. I believe that this recurrence (obsession) is part of what makes great writers, and this is why I give two stars to "The Prague Cemetery".

The language is so refined and measured, it is like one of the numerous recipes published in the "Prague Cemetery"--it is a tasty reading and only for people that know what the author is talking about. I would recommend to all passersby--skip it, don't read it because it will bother you. This book is a literary gourmet and it will not be a good meal for the fast food lovers. My 2 cents.

As one who had no memory for all of the nineteenth century intrigues, I was in trouble from the start. I should have read these other reviews first. I like one reviewer's idea of using Wikipedia to find out all of the names, places and events.
Lesson learned: The book has a forward, but it is at the end. I wish I had read the Author's comments before starting the book. I would help me to understand how much I do not know.
Aside from that, I found it very difficult to tract the plot, time and place as the story unfolded. Given much more time, it might have been fun to trace the characters and events on a time line as I read the book. I think the book would have benefited from a couple of more rewrites and a diligent editor, with goal to make it more reader friendly for those not steeped in nineteenth century political history.

I can't believe that some people actually think that the views that the author puts in the mouth of the character whom he creates are his own opininions. Umberto Eco is of course attacking ideological fanatacism and anti-semitism, not advocating them! To think that Eco supports the political opinions of his character is like thinking that because Shakespeare created Macbeth, he must have been in favour of tyranny and mass murder.

Unusual "novel" in that everyone in it except the main character is a figure from history that existed and wrote many of the words attributed to them. A view of the genesis of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion". A difficult read at time, but an informational treasure trove.

Based on the description, this was not anywhere near what I expected. The writing style and narrator were not too my taste. We tried to read this for book club and not one of us was able to finish it. I expected this to be more of a historical fiction with a story, this was more just a rant about how every race and group is to blame.

If you need to be convinced that criminal psychopaths exist or that anti semitism is a fictititious paranoid creation, then this book my be for you. Without Kindle, the allusions to obscure personalities in history will be lost. If you are interested in recipes for 19th century cooking, you may find something of interest. The anti hero allegedly the author of a diary, has no redeeming traits other than an obsession with food and saving his own skin. The book is poorly written and purports to explain the origins of the protocols of Zion a famous and vicious anti-semitic tract. As historical fiction it leaves one with deep dread, very much like reading an auto biography of Adolph Eichman. I suggest that you read Les Miserables, there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

Reading anyting by Eco is always challenging. He is a brilliant scholar and author. Some of his other works which I have enjoyed, including especially The Name of the Rose and Foucault's Pendulum, have combined his indepth knowlege of history and politics with an intriguing story. In this new novel, I really just couldn't find anything that made me want to continue reading it other than the fact that, as a Vine member, I am requested to review books that I receive. There is not really much of plot. It is the ramblings of an admittedly insane man which is supposedly in the form of his diary for several years beginning in 1897. It is a hate filled diatribe which touches on just about every religious and ethnic group you can think of and is especially hateful toward women and Jews. Of course, Mr. Eco says in his letter to the reader that he has tried to make his main character the most cynical and disagreeable in all the history of literature.
I would say that he is pretty close to acheiving that distinction. While that may be what makes the story interesting for some readers, it really did just the opposite for me. It is just too all consumingly negative and after a while it became just overwhelming to me. I'd just have to put it down and walk away for a bit to clear all that hate and nastiness out of my head. It is a very well written and intelligent novel and I know there will be people who enjoy it but it simply was not for me.

That is the only word I can think of to describe this book - chaos. It's like Umberto Eco sat down and found an Index of Names in European History (1700-1895) and gave every single character he found a cameo reference. I wanted to like this book; I ended up hating it. Eco goes way overboard with dialogue and plot turns that this book quickly morphs into a morass.

Commenting on any work by Umberto Eco is a daunting task. Eco's massive
learning, deployed in each of his books not to impress but to reinforce
the depth and complexity of his thought, as well as the intricacy of
the narrative structures he delights in creating, combine to force doubt
and uncertainty in the mind of a reviewer--have I missed something crucial?
Are the subtleties too remote for my comprehension? Of course, these are
good problems to have, since they are part of the constant pleasure of reading
Eco (whether nonfiction or fiction), and recognizing them as signals that the
characteristics of Eco's work are present in this latest novel.

The Prague Cemetery purports to be the memories of a man of the 19th century,
or arguably two men, since we are shown that "Captain Simonini" is also
"Abbe Dalla Piccola" --though neither of the two men understands at first how
they can both inhabit the same body--but they are a case of multiple personality
disorder, comparable to a woman (Diana) who is being studied and exploited by
psychologists and clerics who find her two personalities (one a "Satanist" who
follows a sect of Freemasons, the other a pious and devout Catholic who is
horrified by the behavior of her alternate personality). The fact that Captain
Simonini encounters a certain "Froide," who is a psychologist working with
the famous Charcot in Paris, reinforces the novel's interest in the transition
from older forms of psychic research (uses of hypnosis by Mesmer and his followers)
toward the "talking cure" and acceptance of the importance of dreams and childhood
trauma in the exploration of adult emotional psychopathology.

Simonini is at the center of this intricate plot, which begins with his self-introduction
and an extended tirade--alternately repulsive and hilarious--in which he establishes
himself as one who loathes and despises nearly every group and nationality he has
encountered in Europe--he deploys the national and ethnic stereotypes familiar from
all expressions of bigotry, and he repeats these corrosive hatreds throughout the
novel at almost every occasion when he encounters a member of a group he finds
subhuman and inferior to, especially, himself. Among these, he includes all women,
of any race or ethnic group, and regularly expresses his horror at the thought of
close contact with any woman (though he never shows any sign of attraction to his
own sex, either). His most powerful and profound hatred, however, is directed toward
the Jews, and that constitutes the driving force of the whole narrative of his
life and activities. He hates the Catholic Church, especially the Jesuit order,
and Freemasons, as well, and this convenient group of targets he uses by exploiting
their rivalries and by setting them against each other through his
schemes and publications, leading finally to his "masterpiece," the combination of
dozens, even hundreds of anti-semitic tirades into what would become the infamous
Protocols of the Elders of Zion. (The vituperative remarks by Simonini toward so
many groups make him somewhat reminiscent of Thomas Bernhard's narrative voices
in such works as Concrete and Old Masters, but also of William Gass's repellent
narrator in The Tunnel. I don't mean to suggest imitation, here, but simply that
there are other characters of similar unpleasantness.)

Simonini, by disguising himself, as well as by employing his alternative persona,
Abbe Dalla Piccola, becomes embroiled at various points (after leaving Italy, where
he had been involved in trying to undermine the unification efforts of Garibaldi and
his cohorts) in the secretive activities of various spy networks--the Prussians,
the Russians, the French, and so on, and in each case, it becomes clear that spies
and secret services have no particular loyalty to any government--in fact, a principle
of successful spy activity seems to be that one must always be ready to transfer one's
services to the next government in power. The various assignments Simonini receives
from his controllers set him to encouraging activities by anti-Catholic, anti-Freemason,
and anti-semitic groups and writers, all of whose works he encourages by offering his
own (or his grandfather's) well-worn writings. Another principle of such hate-mongering
is that it does not matter whether the claims or stories are true or not, nor does it
matter even if they are cribbed from fictions, since the readers who seek them out want
only to have their preconceptions confirmed, and they will read and re-read minor variations
on the same old legends and lies, finding that the familiarity of the stories is
confirmation that they must be true. Recycling narratives is a sure method for attracting
true believers.) Simonini uses an old "legend" of gatherings of rabbis in the Jewish
cemetery in Prague, where they reinforce their beliefs in the inevitable "victory"
of the Jews as they describe the many ways in which Jews will infiltrate all institutions of
Gentile society until they are entirely in control of all political, social, economic, and
educational structures, and thereby dominant throughout the world. This is the "doctrine" of
the Protocols, of course, and Simonini's variations on them lead to his final composition.

The chronology of The Prague Cemetery is complicated in that Simonini and Dalla Piccola are
writing a "diary" in 1897 that attempts to reconstruct (from other notes and documents)
the activities of the preceding forty years, including Simonini's involvement in the
Garibaldian campaigns in Italy, later the Paris Commune as well as other developments
during the tumultuous post-Napoleonic period in France, as well as trying to work out their
relationship to each other and the implications of trying to keep secret the murders and
other activities they have both been involved in.

As I began to read this novel, I almost immediately said to myself that I felt as though
I were back in high school, reading a novel that I had found in the library, Eugene Sue's
The Wandering Jew. It is a novel of complex intrigues and skullduggery, variously
condemning the influence of Jesuits, the Papacy, the Freemasons, and other groups--very
much the roster included in Simonini's rants. Sure enough, as early as page 61, we encounter
our first direct reference to that novel--one title among many (by Dumas and Hugo, especially)
that will occur throughout; the literary world of Paris late in the 19th century is also
shown to be deeply imbued with anti-semitism, indicating Eco's apparent view that no
element of European society, whether aristocratic, capitalist, socialist, or laboring
class can be exempt from the beliefs in conspiracies and exploitation by the Jews
against all the rest of society.

We are told in an endnote that except for Simonini and several minor characters, all the
characters and incidents in this novel are based in historical fact, and all represent
the "secret history" of the evolution of the more powerful and insidious versions of
anti-semitism--leading directly to the "Final Solution"--in Europe. Eco does not suggest
that the Church nor the many variations and sects of Freemasonry are entirely responsible
for the propagation of anti-semitic materials, but they are variously complicit because it
suits their purposes to attack their perceived opponents and to link those opponents to
already established negative groups--most conveniently, the Jews.

It won't do to repeat the incidents of this complex plot, but it is worth noting that
Eco's novel, this time, is negatively affected by the frequent repetition of what are
essentially the same rants--numerous extended and vituperative denunciations of
targeted groups are deployed at too many points of this work, making the reader shrug
after a while with a "here comes another one" feeling. Eco is certainly ingenious
in supplying variations and in using these rants as occasions for the launching of
new developments in Simonini's tortuous career. Even so, the repetitions are finally
counterproductive, and they account for the 4 (rather than 5) star ranking I have
offered here. Everything I have read by Eco has been rewarding in many ways, and
The Name of the Rose remains one of the very finest modern novels, in my view; in
this case, I wish Eco had been more sparing of repetition, as the novel would have
had a more powerful impact, I believe, if it had moved more efficiently from event to
event. Even so, Eco's fans will want to read this and will enjoy it, repulsive as
much of its subject matter must be.

I tried repeatedly to read this book, and, finally, completely gave up. The writing style was laborious. Sentences were too long, and I found myself "wading through" them.
My whole literature group was pretty much of the same opinion as myself--not worth the effort. No stars for this one! I had to check a star to complete my review, but, in my opinion, this book doedsn't deserve a star, not a single one.

Even though this was a free book I thought that the store mislead me in that the book was listed as 464 pages and it wasn't even that in kindle pages. It was only one chapter of that 464 page book. Also the chapter at best was good writing, however it dropped the reader in the middle of the book so you had to figure out who the characters were

If you enjoy reading the phone book then you will love this book. After 150 pages of babble, I had to give up. The story is convoluted and full of endless characters whose actions make you want to scream "who cares"! The book was not a total waste however, I was able to recycle it.

Purportedly a diary dating from 24 March 1897 to December 1898 THE PRAGUE CEMETERY spews out some unsettling vilification's and descriptions of races, religions, beliefs, humanity, cultures. The only redeeming grace (which I can't accept) is that this was supposedly thought/said in the 19th Century; if not for that grasped straw this discomforting read I would have burned this book. Eco is a renowned historical scholar (this book will be published in 39 countries; no-doubt studied and talked about.)

(reviewer edit: AND NOW, IN THE PROCESS OF READING FOR REVIEW ECCO'S LATEST SLUR- INFESTED BOOK 'INVENTING THE ENEMY'. IT TOO IS FILLED WITH ANTISEMITIC SLIME.

HOW ABOUT THIS FOR THE PRAUGUE CEMETARY ENDING: "But I'd like to end with a very powerful statement, something that will stick in the mind and symbolize the iniquity of the Jews. For example: Ours is an ambition that knows no limits, a voracious greed, a desire for ruthless revenge, an intense hatred.'" (p424)

ABOVE THAT EXCLAMATION IS A DRAWING DEPICTING A LICENTIOUS JEW. CURLY DARK HAIR, EYES GLEAMING IN HATEFUL GLEE, HANDS WRINGING GREEDILY, HUNCH-BACKED, WEARING A YAMAKA SKULL CAP. I'M NOT FOR BOOK BURNING, FREEDOM OF THE PRESS IS VITAL TO AMERICAN DEMOCRACY. MAYBE the store SHOULD PROMINENTLY PUT A STATEMENT LIKE "WARNING, THIS BOOK IS FILLED WITH ETHNIC SLURS. (FRANKLY, READING THIS 'CEMETERY'TOMB - ER, TOME - UPSET ME, GOT ME ANGRY...)

A great deal else is said about life in the 1800's, some of interest, some mundane and of interest mostly to students of those times; habits, preferences, styles, gossip - like, the diarist was supposedly Sigmund Freud's drug dealer (cocaine).

Overall, this read is informative (ethnically mostly dis-informing though) than entertaining. It's a dark stream of consciousness; takes effort getting used to.

If you're a historical scholar or sociologist, you may go for it. If you're concerned about religious intolerance, bigotry and misrepresentation pass on this angering slice of nastiness.

There is no plot (in a literary sense) to this; more like dark musings detailing past thinking - bigoted beliefs/hatreds. There's a lot of thoughts of how thinking changes over the centuries. It made me wonder what will future people think or our era reading this book? (shudder) Actually, mixing fiction and nonfiction is a very good vehicle to illuminate those good old days of rising from ignorance.

Read a more entertaining example of Umberto Eco's work; here's one I like:The Name of the Rose (Everyman's Library (Cloth)). It was made into an even better movie with Sean Connery and Christian Slater: The Name of the Rose [Blu-ray] (Earlier prints were muddled; with Blu-ray it's crisp, clear and great! And the Blu-ray now costs less than a DVD, thank you the store...)

Oh, if you're a scholar wanting information with entertainment, try this surprise:When Nietzsche Wept: A Novel of Obsession (P.S.) (There's even
a study guide... Author, Dr.Irvin D. Yalom. Fascinating, informative with no slime whatsoever. Dr. Yalon is a noted psychiatrist and there are many other fact/fiction
books he offers. Highly recommended!

There is no doubt in my mind that this author is in the slightly deranged genius category and that this book is a masterful piece of art. Set at turn of the 20th century in a Europe seething with hatred between countries and individuals, it is a dark and brooding story of a narrator with multiple personalities including that of a expert forger of documents as well as a Jesuit priest. The book is teaming with corruption and hatred. No ethnic group is spared but it is particularly vitriolic against the Jews. Also, it requires an understanding of European history. Umberto Eco has a unique writing style and his words pour over the page with gusto.

That said, I must say that I am abandoning it at page 120. I am not a scholar of European history and I find it confusing to follow. There is also an undertone of cruelty and I find that upsetting. And so, in spite of the fact that it is clearly a fine book, there is no way I can force myself to read another page.

This is not a critique of the book, but of the "Free Sampler" of it for Kindle. I was charged $.99 for it. It's clearly labeled as a "Free", underline "Free", sample of a chapter called "Night Mass". Not that I'm a cheapskate, but really, how about some truth in advertising? The book comes out next month, I'm champing at the bit, so a "Free" sample sounded great. Nothing beats little nickel and dime crap like this if your goal is to tick off a customer.

EDIT: The free sample isn't available as of now (10/10), I gather the store is fixing the situation. FWIW the "free" chapter clearly comes from late in the book, and the fate of what must certainly be a major character is divulged. I don't recommend reading it. FYI, it's somewhat reminiscent of the St. John's Eve scene in Foucault's Pendulum, including a narrator who's on some kind of psychotropic drug, meaning his memory is unreliable. The prose certainly seemed up to par. There were illustrations, I don't know if they're supposed to be in color, but my Kindle renders them in black and white. Eco's previous novel had a lot of color illustrations, assuming the new one does too then Kindle's probably not the way to go.

EDIT (10/25): Having received many votes and comments that this review is not helpful, I'd like to reiterate that this is a review of the "free" sample. It is clearly labeled as such. See "the store verified purchase" and which item it says I bought. I would prefer if it only showed up under the listing for that item, but this is not how the store is handling it.

As someone else said, there are very few books I do not finish, this was one of them, I took it back even, horrible, it was slow moving, overly wordy and the plot was so slow I would fall asleep while reading. I read about 100 books a year and this one, I just couldn't get through. For those who liked it, thrilled for them, but if you just want some fiction to read and enjoy it, choose another book.

Those who think this book stirs up anti-semitism are simply not very bright readers. All conspiracy theories are shown to be hoaxes, and all bigotry and groundless suspicion and slander shown to be diabolical. That is not the problem.

The problem is that this is simply a very, very bad novel: dull, mechanical, lifeless, and ponderous. Eco has never been a great artist. His skill as a novelist, limited though it is, has always been as a kind of entertainer, bringing up curious facts and fantasies out of his files of the odd and idiotic. This book does not entertain, is not very clever, and is a task to read from beginning to end.

The translation was so poor as to be virtually unreadable. After struggling through a chapter, I simply returned the book-- someth9ing I've never done before. I was disappointed that a new book by a favorite author will not be available to an English speaking audience.

Somewhere within the excess of Eco's work lies a fine novel. Wading through the litter of overwritten disgorge makes work of what could be enjoyment-even enlightenment.
Was there no editor?
A case for 'Less is More'.

Maybe it's just the font, but I'm having a tough time getting through this book. On second tought, it's probably not the font; it's probably that the author makes me feel dumb for not speaking Italian (yes, even the English translation still contains Italian words), not knowing more about Italian history (oops), and not liking sentences like this one that go on and on and on and on and on (ok, you get the point). If I sound like I have a lot of pent up rage, it's because I HATE THIS BOOK!

I favor books with historical backgrounds. The Prague Cemetery by Ecco has a lot of history, but has a lot of hatred and antisemtic over tones. I could not finish this garbage of a book. And the historical facts get loss by the main character who is one sick individual.

What the world needs now is less hatred not more Mr. Ecco.

The worry is that stupid people all over the world and their manipulators in government,churches,and mosques will use Eco's claptrap to continue the sad history of antisemitism. I do not believe in book burning, but might entertain the author's fire.

I've been of fan of this author for a long time. But this book was just terrible. Nothing but a long anti Jewish rant. No plot, no character development, no nothing. I finally threw in the towel with only 100 pages to go. Don't understand what others saw in this. If you liked The Name of the Rose and Foucault's Pendulum, save yourself some time and don't even try this one.