![]() Are the elusive stories Braggadocio unfurls real or are they only his "reconstruction of the facts"? The question takes on added resonance in the landscape of the newspaper office, where nothing is as it appears. Even its protagonists don't fully believe the narrative they are spinning - until, that is, danger asserts itself. "Numero Zero" sits somewhere in the middle, blending fiction and real-life events. Numero Zero, by Umberto Eco, translated by Richard Dixon, Harvill Secker, RRP16.99/Houghton Mifflin, RRP24. Numero Zero, by Umberto Eco, translated by Richard Dixon, Harvill Secker, RRP£16. In the former, such a conspiracy is invented, although it still has profound ramifications in the latter, perhaps, not so much. Eco may falter with his aborted drama, but he excels with his blackly comic satire. The following is from Umberto Eco’s novel, Numero Zero.Eco is the author of five novels and numerous essay collections, including The Name of the Rose, The Prague Cemetery, and Inventing the Enemy. In those books too he illuminates conspiracies with deep roots, stretching across history: a series of shadow narratives that explain, or undermine our explanation, of the world. ![]() He remains best known (in America, anyway) for his 1980 novel "The Name of the Rose," but it is two later novels, "Foucault's Pendulum" and "The Prague Cemetery," that "Numero Zero" most invokes. ![]() Eco has long played with the question of meaning - in his criticism and essays, his embrace of semiotics and intertextuality, and his fiction as well. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |