Umberto Eco Books

Franklin Library Umberto Eco books:
Foucault's Pendulum - signed first edition - 1989

 

Foucault's Pendulum
A literary prank leads to deadly danger in this “endlessly diverting” intellectual thriller by the author of The Name of the Rose.
 
Bored with their work, three Milanese book editors cook up an elaborate hoax that connects the medieval Knights Templar with occult groups across the centuries. Becoming obsessed with their own creation, they produce a map indicating the geographical point from which all the powers of the earth can be controlled, a point located in Paris, France, at Foucault’s Pendulum.
 
But in a fateful turn the joke becomes all too real. When occult groups, including Satanists, get wind of the Plan, they go so far as to kill one of the editors in their quest to gain control of the earth. Orchestrating these and other diverse characters into his multilayered semiotic adventure, Umberto Eco has created a superb cerebral entertainment.

Three clever editors (who have spent altogether too much time reviewing crackpot manuscripts on the occult by fanatics and dilettantes) decide to have a little fun. They are inspired by an extraordinary fable they heard years before from a suspiciously natty colonel, who claimed to know of a mystic source of power greater than atomic energy.

On a lark, the editors begin randomly feeding esoteric bits of knowledge into an incredible computer capable of inventing connections between all their entries. What they believe they are creating is a long, lazy game - until the game starts taking over...

Here is an incredible journey of thought and history, memory and fantasy, a tour de force as enthralling as anything Umberto Eco or indeed anyone has ever devised.