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Book Summary and Reviews of Numero Zero by Umberto Eco

Numero Zero by Umberto Eco

Numero Zero

by Umberto Eco

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  • Published:
  • Nov 2015, 208 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

A scintillating take on our times from the author of The Name of the Rose and Foucault's Pendulum.

A newspaper committed to blackmail and mud slinging, rather than reporting the news.

A paranoid editor, walking through the streets of Milan, reconstructing fifty years of history against the backdrop of a plot involving the cadaver of Mussolini's double.

The murder of Pope John Paul I, the CIA, red terrorists handled by secret services, twenty years of bloodshed, and events that seem outlandish until the BBC proves them true.

A fragile love story between two born losers, a failed ghost writer, and a vulnerable girl, who specializes in celebrity gossip yet cries over the second movement of Beethoven's Seventh. And then a dead body that suddenly appears in a back alley in Milan. 

Set in 1992 and foreshadowing the mysteries and follies of the following twenty years, Numero Zero is a scintillating take on our times from the best-selling author of The Name of the Rose and Foucault's Pendulum.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"Starred Review. [To] read Eco well, it helps to know about everything. Not quite as substantial as The Name of the Rose but a smart puzzle and a delight all the same." - Kirkus

"As fact and fiction merge into mystery, Eco offers fewer clues than in his masterwork, The Name of the Rose, but no William of Baskerville to solve the puzzle." - Publishers Weekly

"Eco's caustically clever, darkly hilarious, dagger-quick tale of lies, crimes, and collusions condemns the shameless corruption and greed undermining journalism and governments everywhere. A satisfyingly scathing indictment brightened by resolute love." - Booklist

This information about Numero Zero was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

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Author Information

Umberto Eco Author Biography

Umberto Eco was born in the city of Alessandria in the Italian region of Piedmont,  right in the middle of the Genova, Milan, Turin triangle. His novels include The Name of the Rose, Foucault's Pendulum, The Island of the Day Before and Baudolino. His collections of essays include Five Moral Pieces, Kant and the Platypus, Serendipities, Travels in Hyperreality, and How to Travel with a Salmon and other Essays. He also wrote extensively on philosophy, including in the areas of semiotics, linguistics, aesthetics and morality. He died in February 2016 aged 84.

In September 1962, Eco married Renate Ramge, a German art teacher with whom he has a son and a daughter. He divides his time between an apartment in Milan and a vacation house near Rimini.

... Full Biography
Link to Umberto Eco's Website

Name Pronunciation
Umberto Eco: Um-bair-toe EK-oh (the um is like the ending of possum)

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