Umberto Eco: Wise is he who selects and combines glimmers of light. Why “Baudolino” is the best novel by Umberto Eco: critic Mikhail Wiesel explains. The scientist and the writer were perfectly combined in him, his scientific works are as exciting to read as his novels, and

Italian writer, historian and philosopher Umberto Eco died at the age of 85 at home.

The most famous works of Umberto Eco are the novels “The Name of the Rose” (1980), “Foucault’s Pendulum” (1988), “The Island of the Day Before” (1994). In January 2015, the writer’s last novel, “Number Zero,” was published.

1. Italian writer, historian and philosopher Umberto Eco died at the age of 85 at home.

2. “I was born in Alessandria, the same town famous for its borsalino hats.”

Eco in Italy was considered a rather stylishly dressed man, and there was a certain touch of humor in his wardrobe.

3. In 1980, his novel “The Name of the Rose” was published, which became a bestseller and glorified the writer throughout the world.

This book subsequently became his most famous literary work and was filmed in 1986. The main roles in the film were played by Sean Connery and Christian Slater.

4. Eco himself considered writing not the most important part of his life. “I'm a philosopher. I only write novels on weekends.”

Umberto Eco was a scientist, a specialist in popular culture, a member of the world's leading academies, a laureate of the world's largest prizes, a holder of the Grand Cross and the Legion of Honor. Eco was an honorary doctor from many universities. He wrote a large number of essays on philosophy, linguistics, semiotics, and medieval aesthetics.

5. Umberto Eco is a recognized expert in the field bondology, that is, everything related to James Bond.

6. Umberto Eco's library had about thirty thousand books.

7. Umberto Eco never ran for transport.

“One day, my Parisian classmate, the future novelist Jean-Olivier Tedesco, said, convincing me that I shouldn’t run to catch the metro: “I don’t run after trains”…. Despise your destiny. Now I don't rush to run in order to leave on schedule. This advice may seem very simple, but it worked for me. Having learned not to chase trains, I appreciated the true meaning of grace and aesthetics in behavior, and felt that I was in control of my time, schedule and life. It’s only a shame to be late for the train if you’re running after it!”

In the same way, not achieving the success that others expect from you is only offensive if you yourself strive for it. You find yourself above the mouse race and the queue at the feeding trough, and not outside of them, if you act in accordance with your own choice,” Eco reasoned.

8. To warm up, in the morning, Mr. Eco solved the following astrological puzzles.

“Everyone is always born under the wrong star, and the only way to live like a human being is to correct your horoscope every day.”

9. Eco has many fans (namely fans, not book lovers) all over the world.

License plate of an Eco fan from the USA.

10. “The best way to approach death is to convince yourself that there are only fools around.”

Umberto Eco wrote: “The idea that when death comes, all this wealth will be lost is the cause of both suffering and fear... I think: what a waste, dozens of years have been spent on building a unique experience, and all this has to be thrown away. Burn the Library of Alexandria. Blow up the Louvre.

To imprison in the depths of the sea the most wondrous, richest and full of knowledge Atlantis.” — In this essay, Eco comes to the conclusion that eternal life, despite all this, would burden him.

Umberto Eco was born on January 5, 1932, in Alexandria, near Turin. The novel “Baudalino” perfectly describes this amazing medieval city, which has ancient, even ancient roots. Much of Eco's novels have autobiographical roots. He himself said: “Whatever character you invent, one way or another he will be grown from your experience and your memory.”

In 1954, Eco graduated from the University of Turin with a degree in Medieval Literature and Philosophy. Then he taught aesthetics and cultural theory at the universities of Milan, Florence and Turin, and lectured at Oxford, Harvard, and Yale. He was an honorary doctor of many world universities, a member of the world's leading academies, a laureate of the world's largest prizes, a holder of the Grand Cross and the Legion of Honor, the founder and director of scientific and artistic magazines, and a collector of ancient books.

Umberto Eco's doctoral dissertation, “Problems of Aesthetics in Saint Thomas” (1956, subsequently revised and republished under the title “Problems of Aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas” in 1970), shows how deeply he was interested in the problems of medieval aesthetics, which were directly related to ethics. The integrity of the medieval worldview, of course, was most fully manifested in aesthetics.

Eco's second work, published in 1959, established him as one of the authorities on the Middle Ages, better known from a revised later edition as Beauty and Art in Medieval Aesthetics (1987). And the further Eco delved into the study of the history and culture of other eras, the more he realized that the destruction of beauty in this world testifies to the destruction of the very foundations of this world. And even when he wrote about our modernity, there was always a longing for the Middle Ages in him, but not as about the dark ages, as this era is often perceived, but about the medieval ideal of the unity of beauty, truth and goodness.

Although, as a scientist, Umberto Eco understood perfectly well that the people of the Middle Ages themselves destroyed this ideal in the most cruel way. At the same time, Eco admitted: “I never considered the Middle Ages to be a dark time. This was the fertile soil on which the Renaissance grew.” Subsequently, having started researching the poetics of J. Joyce and the aesthetics of the avant-garde, he showed how the classical image of the world is gradually being destroyed in European culture, and, above all, not in things, but in language. He was extremely interested in problems of language, communication, and sign systems.

At the age of 48, already an established scientist, Eco took up fiction, but the powerful erudition of the scientist is clearly felt in his works of art. However, despite the fame that his popular novels brought him, he did not abandon his academic pursuits.

The scientist and the writer were perfectly combined in him; his scientific works are as fascinating to read as his novels, and from the novels you can study the culture of a particular era.

Umberto Eco worked on television, was a columnist for the largest Italian newspaper Espresso, and collaborated with other periodicals. He was extremely interested in the phenomenon of mass culture. But even here he remained a scientist: he dedicated several essays to the writer Ian Fleming and his hero James Bond. His book “Full Back” is dedicated to the media as a phenomenon of modern culture.

Umberto Eco is often called a representative of postmodernism, which is partly true. But only partly because he does not fit into the framework of the understanding of postmodernism that is often declared today, he does not renounce one iota of the classical heritage, which he not only uses as a reservoir for his works, but feels as powerful roots that feed him. He swims in world culture like a fish in water, and does not build a tower on the ruins of the past. To understand his novels, which are extremely rich and multi-layered, you need to know a large layer of world culture. Not to mention his scientific works, which are encyclopedic in the most original sense of the word.

Of course, like many writers of our time, Umberto Eco destroys the barriers between the author and the reader; he was one of the first to develop the theory of the so-called open work, in which the reader and viewer become co-authors. As both a writer and a critic, Umberto Eco discovered the genre of self-commentary, which, of course, reflects the endlessly self-reflective position of postmodernity, but also returns us to the tradition of medieval commentary. So, three years after the publication of his novel “The Name of the Rose,” he wrote the book “Notes in the Margins of “The Name of the Rose,” where he reveals some of the secrets of this novel and discusses the relationship between the author, the reader and the work in literature.

Irony is also called one of the signs of a postmodern work, and Eco always has it. But this irony never destroys the integrity and seriousness of the plan, which is always visible in the depths. Depth, by the way, is what also distinguishes Eco from many of his contemporaries; superficiality is one of the signs of postmodern culture. Eco can describe a superficial view, show the emptiness of the surrounding world, from which meaning has disappeared, and does it brilliantly; he can expose the facelessness and deceit of modernity, using the methods of postmodernism, but he does this not for the sake of play, but in the name of awakening the thirst for meaning, for a person to find his own face and return to the integrity of the world.

His ethical position is well demonstrated by the essay “Eternal Fascism”. As an Italian, he could not ignore this topic, he was very interested in the figure of Mussolini, and, studying the phenomenon of fascism, the scientist comes to the conclusion that any nation, even the most cultural, can go mad, lose its human essence, and turn its life into hell. In each of us, an abyss and emptiness can be revealed, into which everything that people value and live, that has been created over centuries and that makes a person human, will collapse.

Eco positioned himself as an agnostic and anti-clerical, but he had great respect for Christian culture and evangelical values.

Published by the BBI 15 years ago (and since then reprinted three times), his book of dialogues on faith and unbelief with Cardinal Martini shows the difference between Christian intellectuals, of which Carlo Martini undoubtedly belonged, and European humanists, of which Umberto was certainly Eco, there is a lot in common, at least with regard to issues of human dignity, the value of life, problems of bioethics and culture.

If Umberto Eco believed in something, it was in the effectiveness of culture, which has its own laws, over which man has no control, therefore, even in the most barbaric eras, culture wins. Deeply studying world culture of different eras, Eco comes to an unexpected conclusion: “Culture is not in crisis, it is itself a constant crisis. The crisis is a necessary condition for its development.” The writer’s task is to create this crisis, in which the smooth flow of life of an ordinary person is destroyed by unexpected questions to which a person is forced to look for an answer.

Eco was also convinced that, despite the advent of a new post-Gutenberg era, the book will never die, just as the reader will never die. And the author's death is predicted prematurely. In any era, a person does not stop thinking and asking questions, it’s just that a book forces him to do this purposefully. “Books are written not to be believed, but to be thought about. Having a book in front of him, everyone should try to understand not what it expresses, but what it wants to express,” says the hero of his novel “The Name of the Rose.”

A book is a matrix of culture, a library is a model of the world. In this he is close to his predecessor, H. L. Borges. “It’s nice to assume that a library does not have to consist of books that we have read or will someday read. These are books that we can read. Or they could read it. Even if we never open them” (essay “Don’t expect to get rid of books”). And no matter how his own works were interpreted, he was sure that “a good book is always smarter than its author. Often she talks about things that the author did not even know about.”

Umberto Eco always argued that true happiness lies in the pursuit of knowledge. He always remained a scientist who, no matter what he wrote about, no matter what forms and genres he used, extracted grains of knowledge and wisdom from everywhere, which he generously shared with everyone. He himself said this: “He who rejects is not wise; he is wise who selects and combines glimmers of light, wherever they come from.”

Years of life: from 01/05/1932 to 02/19/2016

Italian scientist-philosopher, medievalist historian, semiotics specialist, writer.

Umberto Eco is born January 5, 1932 in Alessandria (Piedmont), a small town east of Turin and south of Milan. Father Giulio Eco, an accountant by profession, a veteran of three wars, mother Giovanna Eco (nee Bisio).

Fulfilling the wishes of his father, who wanted his son to become a lawyer, Eco entered the University of Turin, where he took a course in jurisprudence, but soon left this science and began studying medieval philosophy. He graduated from the university in 1954, submitting an essay dedicated to the religious thinker and philosopher Thomas Aquinas as a dissertation.

In 1954 went to work at RAI (Italian Television), where he was editor of cultural programs and published in periodicals. IN 1958–1959 served in the army.

Eco's first book: Problems of Aesthetics in St. Thomas (1956) was subsequently revised and republished under the title Problems of Aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas (1970) . The second, published in 1959 and placing the author among the most authoritative experts on the Middle Ages, after revision and revision, was republished under the title Art and Beauty in Medieval Aesthetics (1987) .

IN 1959 Eco becomes senior editor for the non-fiction literature section of the Milanese publishing house Bompiani (where he worked until 1975 ) and begins to collaborate with the magazine “Il Verri”, writing a monthly column. After reading the book of the French semiotician R. Barthes (1915–1980) Mythologies (1957 ), Eco discovered that his presentation of the material was in many ways similar to Barthes’s, and therefore changed his style. Now he performs original parodies, ironically interpreting the same ideas that were seriously considered on the pages of the magazine. The articles published in "Il Verri" formed the collection Diario minimo (1963) , entitled according to the column led by Eco, and almost three decades later the collection Second Diario minimo was published (1992) .

In his scientific works, Eco considered both general and specific problems of semiotics, for example, he deepened the theory of the iconic sign. In his opinion, the iconic sign reproduces the conditions of perception, and not at all the properties of the object it depicts, while the codes that are used in the interpretation of signs are not universal codes, they are culturally conditioned. Eco's contribution is especially significant in the field of interpretation of visual arts, in particular cinema and architecture.

The scientific merits of Eco, who, among other things, is the founder of the 1971 the magazine "Versus", dedicated to issues of semiotics, and the organizer of the first international congress on semiotics, held in Milan in 1974, are highly appreciated. He is the Secretary General of the International Association for Semiotic Studies (1972–1979) , Vice President of the International Association for Semiotic Studies (1979–1983) , Honorary President of the International Association for Semiotic Studies (with 1994 ), participant of the international UNESCO Forum (1992–1993) . Eco is a member of various academies, including the Bologna Academy of Sciences (1994) and the American Academy of Letters and Arts ( 1998 ). He is Doctor honoris causa of the Catholic University, Louvain ( 1985 ), University of Oden, Denmark ( 1986 ), Loyola University, Chicago, New York University, Royal College of Art, London (all - 1987 ), Brown University ( 1988 ), University of Paris (New Sorbonne), University of Liege (both 1989 ), Sofia University, University of Glasgow, University of Madrid (all - 1990 ), University of Kent (Canterbury) ( 1992 ), Indiana University ( 1993 ), the University of Tel Aviv, the University of Buenos Aires (both 1994 ), University of Athens ( 1995 ), Academy of Fine Arts, Warsaw, University of Tartu, Estonia (both 1996 ), University of Grenoble, University of La Mancha (both 1997 ), Moscow State University, Free University, Berlin (both 1998 ), member of the editorial board of the magazines “Communication”, “Degrès”, “Poetics Today”, “Problemi dell"informazione”, “Semiotica”, “Structuralist Review”, “Text”, “Word & Images”, winner of many literary awards, noted awards from different countries, in particular, he is a Knight of the Legion of Honor, France (1993 ). About six dozen books and a huge number of articles and dissertations have been written about him; scientific conferences are dedicated to his work, including In Search of a Rose Eco, USA ( 1984 ), Umberto Eco: for meaning, France ( 1996 ), Eco and Borges, Spain ( 1997 ).

However, worldwide fame came not to the Eco-scientist, but to the Eco-prose writer.

When asked why he rejected the offer to become minister of culture in the late 1990s, Eco replied: “... I would like to clarify what is meant by the word “culture”. If it refers to the aesthetic products of the past - paintings, ancient buildings, medieval manuscripts - I am entirely in favor of government support. But this... is handled by the Ministry of Heritage. What remains is “culture” in the sense of creativity - and here I can hardly lead a team that is trying to subsidize and inspire the creative process. Creativity can only be anarchic, living according to the laws of capitalism and survival of the fittest.”

Umberto Eco was born on January 5, 1932 in the small town of Alessandria in the north-west of the Italian region of Piedmont. His father, Giulio Eco, a veteran of three wars, worked as an accountant. The surname Eco was given to his grandfather (a foundling) by a representative of the city administration - an abbreviation of the Latin ex caelis oblatus ("gift from heaven").

Fulfilling the wishes of his father, who wanted his son to become a lawyer, Umberto Eco entered the University of Turin, where he took a course in jurisprudence, but soon left this science and began studying medieval philosophy. In 1954, he graduated from the university, presenting an essay dedicated to the religious thinker and philosopher Thomas Aquinas as a dissertation.

In 1954, Eco joined RAI (Italian Television), where he was editor of cultural programs. In 1958-1959 he served in the army. In 1959-1975, Eco worked as a senior editor for the non-fiction literature section of the Milanese publishing house Bompiani, and also collaborated with Verri magazine and many Italian publications.

Eco carried out intensive teaching and academic activities. He lectured on aesthetics at the Faculty of Literature and Philosophy of the University of Turin and at the Faculty of Architecture of the Politecnico di Milano (1961-1964), was professor of visual communications at the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Florence (1966-1969), professor of semiotics (the science that studies the properties of signs and sign systems ) Faculty of Architecture of the Politecnico di Milano (1969-1971).

From 1971 to 2007, Eco's activities were associated with the University of Bologna, where he was Professor of Semiotics in the Faculty of Literature and Philosophy and Head of the Department of Semiotics, as well as Director of the Institute of Communication Sciences and Director of Degree Programs in Semiotics.

Eco taught at various universities around the world: Oxford, Harvard, Yale, Columbia University. He also gave lectures and conducted seminars at universities in the Soviet Union and Russia, Tunisia, Czechoslovakia, Switzerland, Sweden, Poland, Japan, as well as in such cultural centers as the US Library of Congress and the USSR Writers' Union.

Eco-semiotician became famous after the publication of the book “Opera aperta” (1962), where the concept of an “open work” was given, the idea of ​​which can have several interpretations, while a “closed work” can have one single interpretation. Among the scientific publications, the most famous are “Frightened and United” (1964) on the theory of mass communication, “Joyce’s Poetics” (1965), “The Sign” (1971), “Treatise on General Semiotics” (1975), “On the Periphery of Empire” (1977 ) on the problems of cultural history, “Semiotics and philosophy of language” (1984), “Limits of interpretation” (1990).

The scientist has also done a lot to understand the phenomena of postmodernism and mass culture.

Eco became the founder of the semiotics magazine Versus, published since 1971, and the organizer of the first international congress on semiotics in Milan (1974). He was President of the International Center for Semiotic and Cognitive Research and Director of the Department of Semiotic and Cognitive Research.

However, Eco's worldwide fame came not as a scientist, but as a prose writer. His first novel, The Name of the Rose (1980), was on the bestseller list for several years. The book was translated into many foreign languages, awarded the Italian Strega Prize (1981) and the French Medici Prize (1982). The film adaptation of the novel "The Name of the Rose" (1986), made by French film director Jean-Jacques Annaud, received the Cesar Award in 1987.

The writer also wrote the novels “Foucault’s Pendulum” (1988), “The Island on the Eve” (1994), “Baudolino” (2000), “The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana” (2004). In October 2010, Eco's novel "Prague Cemetery" was published in Italy. At the XIII International Fair of Intellectual Literature Non/Fiction in Moscow, this book became an absolute bestseller.

The writer’s seventh novel, “Number Zero,” was published in 2015 on his birthday.

Eco is also a recognized expert in the field of Bondology, the study of all things James Bond.

He was a member of various academies, including the Bologna Academy of Sciences (1994) and the American Academy of Letters and Arts (1998), honorary doctorates from many universities around the world, and winner of various literary awards. Eco was awarded by many countries, including the French Legion of Honor (1993), the German Order of Merit (1999). Several dozen books and many articles and dissertations have been written about him, and scientific conferences have been dedicated to him.

In recent years, the writer has combined active scientific and teaching activities with appearances in the media, responding to the most important events in social life and politics.

He was married to a German woman, Renate Ramge, who worked as an art consultant. They had two children.

The material was prepared based on information from RIA Novosti and open sources

Umberto IVF

Umberto Eco is a famous Italian writer, cultural figure, philosopher, philologist, and postmodern theorist. He is famous for his books about the cultural history of the Middle Ages, the problems of semiotics, and wrote a collection of essays, “Travels into Hyperreality.” In the writer's novels, the characteristic features of ironic, philosophical, ethical, detective and historical prose can be traced, which is built on the variability and ambiguity of the main concepts of human experience. You can read Umberto Eco's books online for free in our library by going to .

Brief biography of Umberto Eco

Umberto Eco was born in 1932 in the small town of Alexandria near Turin. The father always wanted his son to become a lawyer, but contrary to his wishes, the writer began to study medieval literature and philosophy. In his younger years, Umberto managed to work as a newspaper columnist and on television. Later he taught cultural theory and aesthetics at universities in Italy. For scientific achievements he received a doctorate and was also awarded the Legion of Honor. The writer fought for life with cancer for 2 years and died on February 19, 2016. After his death, Umberto Eco left many brilliant works; he became famous during his lifetime and is immortalized in the history of literature forever.

Creation

Umberto Eco is an outstanding personality of the twentieth century and the entire era of postmodernism. He believed that signs of postmodernism appear in any period of spiritual crisis. It is at this moment that the phenomenon of disappearance of individuality appears, the consequence of which is the impossibility of the existence of a personal writing style. The writer, using a synthesis of fantasy and literary theory, wants to explain to the reader, accustomed to ordinary classical works, what is the reason for the emergence of unusual forms in the art of our time. In his interviews and works, he always sought to emphasize that postmodernism is a poetic interpretation of the global crisis, where scientific concepts have long been disregarded and where rationalism is no longer acceptable.

We advise you to read it to understand what the writer wanted to convey with his work. This is a cycle of parodies of a critic who works for mass publications and conducts an illiterate assessment of the cultural achievements of mankind. Eco delegates an unknown reviewer to comment on the most famous books, which clearly reflects the process of selecting literature for mass reading.

Umberto Eco (b. 1932) is one of the greatest writers of modern Italy. The famous medievalist, semiotician, specialist in popular culture, Professor Eco published his first novel in 1980, “The Name of the Rose,” which brought him worldwide literary fame.

The action of the novel takes place in a medieval monastery, where its heroes have to solve many philosophical questions and, through logical conclusions, solve the murder that occurred.

Umberto Eco's latest novel has become one of the most read books on the planet. It combines everything that is familiar to readers from the author’s previous works: the fascination of “The Name of the Rose”, the fantastic nature of “Foucault’s Pendulum”, the sophistication of the style of “The Island of the Day Before”. The peasant boy Baudolino, a native of the same place as Eco himself, by chance becomes the adopted son of Frederick Barbarossa. This lays the foundation for the most unexpected incidents, especially since Baudolino has one mysterious property: any of his inventions is perceived by people as the purest truth...

Umberto Eco (b. 1932) is one of the greatest writers of modern Italy, known to Russian readers primarily as the author of the novels “The Name of the Rose” (1980), “Foucault’s Pendulum” (1988) and “The Island on the Eve” (1995).

Eco's fourth novel, Baudolino, published in Italy in November 2000, immediately became an important event and the undisputed leader of the world book market.

“The Name of the Rose” is the first novel by the distinguished Italian writer, scientist and philosopher Umberto Eco. Published in 1980, it immediately became a super bestseller. The book has been translated by many languages, and today it is respected as a classic of world literature. “The Name of the Rose” is a suspenseful detective story, organically woven into the real historical periods of the 14th century.

Umberto Eco (b. 1932) is one of the greatest modern writers, a famous scientist - medievalist, semiotician, specialist in mass culture.

The Island of the Day is Eco's third novel, published in Italy in 1995 after the phenomenal success of The Name of the Rose (1980) and Foucault's Pendulum (1988). In the deceptively simple narrative about the dramatic fate of a young man of the 17th century, about his wanderings in Italy, France and the South Seas, the attentive reader will discover Eco’s traditional endless garland of quotations, and the author’s new appeal to questions that will never cease to concern humanity - what there is Life, what is Death, what is Love.

Umberto Eco (born 1932) is one of the greatest writers of modern Italy. The famous medievalist, specialist in popular culture, Professor Eco is known to Russian readers primarily as the author of the novel “The Name of the Rose” (1980).

“Foucault’s Pendulum” is the writer’s second major novel; Published in 1988, it was translated into many languages ​​and immediately became one of the centers of attraction for the global readership. A brilliant parody analysis of the cultural and historical turmoil of modern intelligentsia, a warning about the dangers of mental sloppiness that gives rise to monsters, from which it is only a step towards the fascist “first I am aware, and then I act”, make the book not only intellectually entertaining, but also, of course, relevant.

“Foucault’s Pendulum” is published in Russian in its entirety for the first time.

Umberto Eco (b. 1932) is an outstanding Italian writer, known to Russian readers primarily as an author of novels "Name of the Rose"(1980), "Foucault's Pendulum"(1988) and "Island the Day Before" (1995).

In the world scientific community, Professor Umberto Eco, honorary doctor of many foreign universities, is famous primarily for his work on medieval studies, cultural history and semiotics. However, taking an active civic position and regularly appearing in periodicals, he became a kind of “moral barometer” for Italian society, at least for a significant part of it. For all that, Eco does not often speak directly on topics of ethics and public morality.

“The Evolution of Medieval Aesthetics” (1958) is a theoretical work by the famous Italian novelist Umberto Eco (author of the bestsellers “The Name of the Rose”, “Foucault’s Pendulum”, “The Island on the Eve”, “Baudolino”), dedicated to the problem of the development of the idea of ​​the Beautiful in medieval philosophy. Already in this work, the literary gift of the writer was fully revealed, who managed to recreate the atmosphere of the spiritual and intellectual life of a long-gone era.

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“The Evolution of Medieval Aesthetics” (1958) is an early theoretical work by Umberto Eco, dedicated to the development of the idea of ​​Beauty in medieval philosophy. Already in this work, the literary gift of the Italian writer was fully revealed; he “updates” history, trying it on today, tries to look at the medieval world “from the inside,” so the text captivates and intrigues the reader. Eco speaks not only about medieval views on sensual and supersensible beauty, the beauty of proportions, the beauty of light, symbol, organism, but also about the extent to which a person of our century is capable of perceiving them.

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Umberto Eco (b. 1932) is known throughout the world for his novels The Name of the Rose, Foucault's Pendulum, The Island of the Day Before, and Baudolino. Doctor of Philosophy, professor of semiotics, now he is an honorary professor at 42 universities around the world. Eco became the laureate of a number of awards and holder of orders, including the French Order of Merit in Literature, the Order of the Legion of Honor, and the Order of the Grand Cross of the Italian Republic.

What is it, a tabloid novel? Maybe so, since the author himself won’t deny it. And in “Prazkyi Zvintar” there are snakes, dungeons, more corpses, ships that fly into the wind in the middle of a volcanic eruption, beaten abates that are resurrected several times, notaries with false beards, Satanists sterichki, who direct black mixtures, carbonari and Parisian communes , Masons, fake “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”, and so on and so on. At the same time, the reader, who gets the first impulse to think, immediately realizes that he has already read about everything here. And it’s so effective. The story of Captain Simonina, the main character of the book, and all the other characters in the new novel by Umberto Eco were truly inspired by those described...

The action of the novel “Prague Cemetery” takes place almost entirely in France, but the consequences of this intrigue will tragically strike the whole world. Russia will soon be at the center of events, where the famous literary forgery “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” was first published in 1905. The novel documents whose efforts this fake was created. The main character is very disgusting, and everything that happens to him is both terrible and interesting. The author, constructing a plot in the spirit of Alexandre Dumas, drags the breathless reader through the fetid Parisian sewers and gangster dens, recruits the hero into the Garibaldian army, forces him to spy on all the intelligence and counterintelligence agencies of the world, including the Russian secret police, to tame the hysterical women from the clinic Dr. Charcot, drinking beer with Sigmund Freud, racing side by side with Freedom on the barricades and even participating in a satanic mass. At the same time, as always, Umberto Eco gives the reader a huge charge of knowledge and ideas in the shell of an adventure novel.