The Prague Cemetery - Umberto Eco (week 2)
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Simone Simonini, the main character of The Prague Cemetery (2010), wakes up with amnesia in 1897. Suspecting that something terrible has happened, he begins a diary in hopes of prompting his memory and begins reconstructing his past out of Europe's most tumultuous events: from the unification of Italy, meeting Alexandre Dumas, the Paris Commune uprising, the Dreyfus Affair--weaving his story and history into a dragnet of conspiratorial theories in search of a scapegoat.
Simonini was conceived by Umberto Eco to be "the most cynical and disagreeable character in all the history of literature." The Prague Cemetery delves into the unsettling reality of the struggle between truth and deception and how misinformation begets belief. But for all its cynicism and disagreeableness, it "has a level of historical detail coupled with a devotion to aesthetics that you won’t find outside of a novel by Thomas Pynchon or James Joyce."
To assist the reader in navigating the twisting plot, Eco has helpfully provided an ironically-titled addendum, "Useless learned explanations."
Week 1 (January 4): Chapters 1-8
Week 2 (January 11): Chapters 9-21
Week 3 (January 18): Chapters 22-27
The Prague Cemetery:
Supplemental:
This meetup is part of the series The Risorgimento.