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The Prague Cemetery

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About this listen

Nineteenth-century Europe, from Turin to Prague to Paris, abounds with the ghastly and the mysterious. Conspiracies rule history. Jesuits plot against Freemasons. Italian priests are strangled with their own intestines. French criminals plan bombings by day and celebrate black masses by night. Every nation has its own secret service, perpetrating forgeries, plots, and massacres. From the unification of Italy to the Paris Commune to the Dreyfus Affair to the notorious forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Europe is in tumult and everyone needs a scapegoat.

But what if, behind all of these conspiracies both real and imagined, lay just one man? What if that evil genius created the most infamous document of all?

 Fiction Genre Fiction Historical International Mystery & Crime Literary Fiction Mystery Crime Middle Ages Italy

Critic reviews

A novel that takes the power of fakery in history to new heights...This work of teasing historical pseudo-reconstruction combines an intriguing philosophy of history with an elaborate set of reflections on narrative and the nature of fiction.
Erudite and pop, sinister and passionate...A work destined to become a classic.
This feels like Eco's most accessible novel since The Name of the Rose, a temptingly complex tale of 19th-century plots and conspiracies, and of an evil genius who may be behind them all
Has latterly been dubbed the thinking person's Da Vinci Code. But Eco is at home in history in a way that Dan Brown is not...Eco has a sure grasp not only of historical fact but of a period's literature. He's a dab hand at intertextuality...His intent in exposing the moment that lies at the origin of modern anti-Semitism seems to be to show how fictions can have factual consequences. Contemporary spin-doctors take note. Lies, particularly if they follow the pattern of paranoid conspiracies and create an enemy, can have dire effects...Eco is a comic master and, in his 80th year, his irreverent intelligence, if not always his plotting or scabrous taste, remains bracing (Lisa Appignanesi)
A heady fictional mixture of absorbing ideas and historical detail
There are little games between the author and the reader, but what makes this novel superior to Eco's recent fictional work, and perhaps even the best novel of the six he has produced, is that he combines a deep seriousness and intrigue of the best fiction. It is a historical novel dealing with issues - like the fear and hatred of anyone regarded as alien -still important today (Joseph Farrell)
Eco is one of the world's great intellectuals (Henry Sutton)
Perhaps history's first and biggest conspiracy theory (John Harding)
All stars
Most relevant
Although a little heavy in places due to its unrelentingly grim theme; its dark humour, intelligence and relevance to todays issues of media and political manipulation, scapegoating and state power make it a worthwhile read. Umberto Ecco's literary style and insight are unbeatable.

Prague Cemetery - Umberto Ecco razor sharp

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This book claims that, with one exception, all the characters actually existed in real life. My grasp of European history is not wide enough to know whether this is true but I certainly recognised a lot of people.

However, that aside, Umberto Eco is a fantastic storyteller and this book is one tall story set against the backdrop of one of the most turbulent periods in recent times. His central character is Simonini, who tells us his story from a room in Paris where he has chosen to lock himself up and travel back over his life. This takes us to Italy and Prague, to the Paris Commune and beyond to the Dreyfus case. We meet with Freemasons, secret agents, Jews, priests, revolutionaries and all sorts in between.

I often feel that Umberto Eco makes stories complicated just for the sake of it and there are points in this story where you wish he would just get on with it. But this is a minor criticism of a fun read.

The narrator adds to the enjoyment, capturing different voices and the excitement of discovery.

A thrilling romp

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Sean Barrett delivers an array of characters in an epic reading of a book set in an exotic context but so very revealing of our current political and cultural machinations being mostly out of our own hands..

Incredible book. Exquisitely read.

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Taking up the challenge of having read and enjoyed La Misteriosa Fiamma della Regina Loana and taking serious enjoyment from Six Walks in the Fictional Woods oI have to say initially that I absolutely loved Eco’s words of fiction.

Like some of the reviewers, I felt a little bit queasy about some of the language used in the novel towards the fictional targets of the fictional polemic. Lots of easy assumptions and old lies roll off the same pen as the wonderful lists and insights into a whole range of historical events. Like Queen Loana this is a children’s compendium of lots of old characters, narratives, ideas, fears and laughs rolled up into a huge ball of a book.

Everyone gets it and the underpinning hookum, that the world is run by the religious is still all too pervasive in our day to day secular lives. We all search for meaning and connections and where there are none we’re happy to see them in whatever nonsense we are fed. This is nonsense - troubling and distasteful at times, but nonetheless nonsense of the highest order. What next for Eco - the Nobel Laureateship? Well maybe if he were to write something a little more conciliatory to those dark figures standing in the shadowy corridors where such decisions are made behind closed, locked doors.

A wonderful book.

Universal gullibility....

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A convoluted and at times weird tale but such skilful writing and narration makes it easy to listen to

Umberto Eco’s genius

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