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Umberto Eco Numero Zero Romanzo Bompiani, Milano, 2015 Storia Delle

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Umberto Eco Numero Zero Romanzo Bompiani, Milano, 2015 Storia Delle Umberto Eco Numero Zero Romanzo Bompiani, Milano, 2015 Storia delle terre e dei luoghi leggendari Bompiani, Milano, 2013 We are very pleased to present this month two new acquisitions for our library by Umberto Eco, Numero Zero (Zero Issue), Bompiani, Milano, 2015 and Stories of Legendary Lands, Bompiani, Milano, 2013. Numero Zero is a satirical novel that takes place in Milan in 1992 and tells the story of a struggling ghostwriter. The ghostwriter and narrator, Colonna, gets hired to write the memoir of a journalist who works at a shady publication called “Domani,” which is financed by a media baron who resembles Silvio Berlusconi. In the process, Colonna gets pulled into a world of corruption and conspiracy theories, including a plot involving the C.I.A. and the corpse of Mussolini’s body double. The protagonist is an extremely well‐read loser who failed to get a university degree. His subsequent jobs included tutoring, writing for newspapers, editing, reading manuscripts. It is the experience in the last activity which helps Colonna (we never learn the protagonist’s first name) to land a well‐paid but rather strange job which will turn his life upside down. It is the April of 1992, and the fifty‐year old Colonna arrives in Milan to meet a certain Simei who wants him to ghost‐write a book titled Tomorrow: Yesterday to be released under Simei’s name. The book in question is supposed to be his memoirs recounting a year of work on a new daily newspaper called Domani (Tomorrow) that will never get published. The sponsor of the doomed project is Vimercate, a rich owner of hotels, nursery homes, TV channels, and tabloids. For the duration of a year, the eccentric tycoon wants to create and maintain a simulacrum of the editorial staff who will produce a dozen of “zero issues” of the newspaper, that is not “real” issues, but just mock‐ups not meant for wide circulation. Except for Simei, who has been designated as the editor‐in‐chief, and Colonna, who will work as his assistant, the newspaper’s staff are to stay oblivious of the fact that the daily will never be launched. According to Simei, Vimercate’s ultimate goal is to snake his way into the so‐called salotto buono, a small circle of industrialists, politicians and bankers controlling the economy of Italy. Vimercate will make sure that the dummy issues purporting to unmask the members of this clique will be seen by some of them, which will lead to his admission into their club in exchange for scrapping the dangerous newspaper. Without much hesitation, Colonna accepts Simei’s proposal and knuckles down to work in the Potemkin village that passes itself off as the editorial office of Domani. From this point, we follow three major narrative threads: the daily work of the editorial staff (which allows Eco to lampoon the vices of contemporary journalism), the love story between Colonna and the only female editor of the newspaper called Maia, and the conspiracy theory developed by Bragadoccio, Colonna’s other colleague. The descriptions of heated discussions during editorial meetings sparkle with Swiftian satire, ridiculing the way newspapers and magazines distort facts and create sensations out of nothing. When briefing his subordinates on the modus operandi for breaking news, Simei explains the basic principles of manipulating the available information to achieve the desired effect on the reading public. The love between Colonna and Maia, while being important for propelling the plot, is not the most successful element of the novel. The Italian writer’s true might is manifested when it comes to re‐visiting seminal historical events, drawing unexpected connections and exposing hidden conspiracies. That is why the most fascinating episodes of the novel are meetings between Colonna and Braggadocio, a tragicomic character. Driven by compulsive mythomania and probably paranoia, Braggadocio comes up with an outlandish theory regarding the fate of the Italian fascist leader Benito Mussolini. The journalist is convinced that in 1945 it was Mussolini’s double who was executed, whereas the real dictator managed to escape unscathed to Argentina, a popular destination for many WWII criminals. Storia delle terre e dei luoghi leggendari is an illustrated voyage and a dynamic tour guide for the human imagination into history’s greatest imaginary places The author explores this human urge to create such places and leads us through lands of myth and invention, showing us their inhabitants, the passions that rule them, their heroes and antagonists, and, above all, the importance they hold for us. Illuminated with more than 300 color images, on scales as large as the mythic continent Atlantis and as small as the fictional location of Sherlock Holmes’s apartment, this book is a fascinating illustrated tour of the fabled places in literature and folklore that have awed, troubled, and eluded us through the ages. From the epic poets of antiquity to contemporary writers of science fiction, from the authors of the Holy Scriptures to modern raconteurs of fairy tales, writers and storytellers through the ages have invented imaginary and mythical lands, projecting onto them all of our human dreams, ideals, and fears. Sensibly, Umberto Eco’s book limits itself to imaginary lands that are significant because, at one time or another, people thought they “really existed or had existed somewhere”. In 15 chapters, he invites readers to accompany him on a tour of places such as Atlantis and Eden, which exist on the cusp of history and myth, and also includes excursions to various Utopias, which have evoked such strong feelings that for some they have become “more real than reality itself”. Each chapter consists of a short essay followed by an anthology of extracts, and throughout Eco is a genial tour guide, pointing out areas of local interest and encouraging us to explore off the beaten track in our own reading. The Book of Legendary Lands is both erudite and thoroughly enjoyable, bringing together disparate elements of our shared literary legacy in a way only Umberto Eco can. Homer’s poems and other ancient and medieval texts are presented side by side with Gulliver’s Travels and Alice in Wonderland; Tolkien shares space with Marco Polo’s Books of the Marvels of the World; films complement poems, and comics inform novels. Together, these stories have influenced the sensibilities and worldview of all of us. «The illustrations are fabulous evocations of places their makers could see only in their mind’s‐eyes … Eco’s book is a reminder that writers and readers once travelled widely and magnificently, without ever leaving their homes or their heads» Ben Macintyre, The Times. .
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