When it barks, it means there is somebody outside.' Animals do not lie human beings do. Why do the Protocols preoccupy him? 'As a scholar I am interested in the philosophy of language, semiotics, call it what you want, and one of the main features of the human language is the possibility of lying. Eco pieces together what little is known of the origins of the text, and offers Simonini, an amoral Italian living in Paris, as the originator of the most toxic of all forgeries.Ĭonspiracies in general, and the Protocols in particular, have been recurrent themes in Eco's work, notably in his second novel, Foucault's Pendulum, where as a joke three nondescript book editors concoct a grand conspiracy that comes to take over their lives. Hitler quoted it extensively, and even now its poison circulates.

Following its publication in Russia in 1903, it was widely read and believed, despite being shown to have been plagiarised from fictional sources. Simonini is presented as the originator of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the early 20th-century fake text that purported to detail a Jewish conspiracy aimed at world domination. Whether or not it is a return to form, it is certainly a return to Eco's favourite subject – conspiracies. Set in the second half of the 19th century and following the fortunes of master forger, murderer and general bad egg Simone Simonini, who manages to have a hand in most of the great events of that period (Italian unification, Franco-Prussian war, Paris Commune, Dreyfus affair), it is a wearying read. The elephant in our cramped little room is that the new book is not a return to form, whether literary or sporting.

Umberto name of the rose