BAUDOLINO

"Because it's true. But don't think I blame you. If you want to become a man of letters, and perhaps one day write Histories, you must also lie and invent stories, otherwise your History would become monotonous. But you must do so in moderation. The world condemns liars who only know how to lie, even about the smallest things, and rewards poets who lie only about the grand." After the resounding success of The Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco—the most important Italian intellectual of this century—returns to the Middle Ages, this time to pay homage to his hometown, Piedmontese Alessandria. While The Name of the Rose, his most famous book, recreates the somber atmosphere of the Inquisition, Baudolino revolves around the pleasures of the court of Frederick Hohenstaufen, known as Barbarossa, at the time of the Third Crusade. The story spans the period between 1152 and 1204, beginning with Barbarossa's ascension to the throne and ending with the conquest of Constantinople by the feared Order of the Knights Templar. The plot stars Baudolino—a creative, deceitful teenager who gives the work its title—and Niketas Choniates, a character inspired by a historian and orator who lived in the court of Constantinople. The narrative rewinds, as Baudolino recounts his adventures and misadventures to Niketas, blending fantasy and reality, history and make-believe. All of this is spiced with countless comical situations. In between, Eco shuffles his invented characters and produces the most recurring effect of his text: interfering with known historical events through acts or circumstances experienced by the fictional characters. "Through this novel," explains Eco, "I reread the medieval period as the fruit of the inventions of a young man." In a small village in lower Piedmont, where Alessandria would later be founded, Baudolino, a fanciful peasant, falls into the good graces of Federico Barbarossa and becomes his adopted son. A compulsive liar, Baudolino has the luck only dreamers possess: everything he invents and creates miraculously produces history. Thus, he constructs a fictitious letter from a priest who speaks of a kingdom in the East, ruled by a Christian. The letter impresses even the adventurer Marco Polo and inspires Barbarossa. Driven by this invention, Federico sets out in pursuit of this dream. Amid monsters that inhabit the medieval unconscious—such as chimeras, unicorns, and dragons—the story takes unexpected turns each time Baudolino recounts a slice of his life. BAUDOLINO is a picaresque adventure, a historical novel in which the problems of contemporary Italy emerge. With his fantastic narrative, a theater of linguistic inventions, Umberto Eco celebrates the power of myth and utopia. Umberto Eco was born in Alessandria, Italy, in 1932. He is a professor of Semiology at the University of Bologna and edits the journal VS. His essays include: *Open Work* (1962), *Minimal Diary* (1963), *The Absent Structure* (1968), *General Treatise on Semiotics* (1975), *Six Walks in the Woods of Fiction* (1994), *Second Minimal Diary* (1990), *Five Moral Writings* (1997), and *Kant and the Platypus* (1997). As a novelist, Eco published *The Name of the Rose* (1980), *Foucaul's Pendulum* (1988), and *The Island of the Day Before* (1994). "Eco lets his virtuosity run free, supported by a seemingly limitless imagination." - O Estado de São Paulo