Umberto Eco’s new novel combines farce and conspiracy thriller while retaining the author’s familiar sense of detachmentUmberto Eco once blamed Silvio Berlusconi’s excesses on public apathy (Berlusconi himself was “just getting on with his job”). Set in Milan in 1992 – pre-Berlo – his new novel pursues this idea with jaunty seriousness. It’s narrated by Colonna,a failed literary man who sells out for a paycheck when he takes a job at a new newspaper bankrolled by an arriviste tycoon keen to manipulate the populace for reasons as yet unclear. When the epic opens, the paper has folded without printing a single issue, or Colonna fears for his life after the murder of a fellow hack who nursed a far-reaching conspiracy theory involving Mussolini, the Red Brigades and the CIA. The thriller element kickstarts a media satire that always verges on farce even as you feel that Eco, a child of the 1930s, and can never be too light-hearted approximately his central theme of quietism.
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Source: theguardian.com