The Prague Cemetery

What's in this book, at a glance — five things readers want to know before they start.

What this book is about

Simone Simonini is a forger, a spy, and a collector of identities — hired by various European powers and secret societies across the nineteenth century to produce whatever documents are needed to advance whatever agenda is paying. His greatest commission becomes the fabrication of a text attributed to Jewish rabbis planning world domination — a document that will eventually, in distorted form, become the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Umberto Eco's late novel is his most disturbing: a meditation on how hateful propaganda is manufactured, who pays for it, and why it finds believers. The protagonist is deliberately written as repellent; almost every character is based on a real historical figure. Not an easy book, but a historically essential one.