Product Description

An extraordinary epic, brilliantly-imagined, new novel from a world-class writer and author of The Name of the Rose. Discover the Middle Ages with Baudolino - a wondrous, dazzling, beguiling tale of history, myth and invention. It is 1204, and Constantinople is being sacked and burned by the knights of the fourth Crusade. Amid the carnage and confusion Baudolino saves a Byzantine historian and high court official from certain death at the hands of the crusading warriors, and proceeds to tell his own fantastical story.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #52563 in Books
• Published on: 2003-10-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 512 pages

Synopsis
It is April 1204, and Constantinople, the splendid capital of the Byzantine Empire, is being sacked and burned by the knights of the Fourth Crusade. Amid the carnage and confusion, one Baudolino saves a Byzantine historian and high court official from certain death at the hands of the crusading warriors, and proceeds to tell his own fantastical story. Born a simple peasant in northern Italy, Baudolino has two major gifts; a talent for learning foreign languages and a skill in telling lies. One day, when still a boy, he met a foreign commander in the woods, charming him with his quick wit and lively mind. The commander - who proves to be the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa - adopts Baudolino and sends him to the university in Paris, where he makes a number of fearless, adventurous friends. Spurred on by myths and their own reveries, this merry band sets out in search of Prester John, a legendary priest-king who was said to rule over a vast kingdom in the East - a phantasmagorical land of strange creatures with eyes on their shoulders and mouths on their stomachs, of eunuchs, unicorns, and lovely maidens.

From the Publisher
'A totally compelling journey into a lost world - a masterpiece' Sunday Telegraph

About the Author
Umberto Eco is the author of three bestselling novels, The Name of The Rose, Foucault's Pendulum, and The Island of The Day Before. His collections of essays also include Five Moral Pieces, Kant and the Platypus, Serendipities, Travels In Hyperreality, and How To Travel With a Salmon and Other Essays. A Professor of Semiotics at the University of Bologna, Umberto Eco lives in Italy.

Customer Reviews

A good yarn
I enjoyed reading this novel, both a good exploration of the medieval fantasy of the exotic and a window into the real politics, culture and personalities of the time. The in-jokes are indeed amusing, for example the notion that the Holy Grail and the legend of Prester John were both dreamed up by the medieval equivalent of a bunch of stoned students!

It's a bit disconcerting how, after the 3rd Crusade, the characters leave a credible world to arrive in a presumably invented orient inhabited by skiapods, blemmyae, unicorns and satyrs, then returns to the real world- and how events resume there as though there were no delineated boundary between the credible and fantastic. Is the reader supposed to suspend disbelief or think 'hang on, this guy's telling porkies?' The narrative switches between first and third person, and one is lulled into taking the impossible stuff at face value.

One flaw I detected in the novel was that Baudolino tells his story to Choniates in the ravaged city of Constantinople, after rescuing him there from the rampaging 'pilgrims' of the Fourth Crusade. I can't believe the courtier would have had time or inclination to sit down and listen to someone's ramblings while his world was burning down in the background and his family remained in some danger. He would have had more pressing concerns! It would have been better to have Baudolino commence his narrative after they had all got away to safety, and things had calmed down a bit, and after Choniates would have recovered from the shock of the outrage, a shock which isn't quite adequately conveyed. Another slight criticism might be that there is little sense in Baudolino's account, of the characters aging or maturing mentally, although the story takes place over an entire lifetime. These things aside (and irrelevant theological digressions notwithstanding), I found it an engaging and at times engrossing book and would certainly recommend it.

Baudolino
Umberto Eco is known for creating difficult first chapters for his novels. If a person will not work through the first chapter of the book, then how can they be trusted to handle the complications of the remainder of the novel? This approach worked with The Name of the Rose and Foucalt's Pendulum because those novels were intelligent, clever and witty. It fails horribly in Baudolino. If you cannot make it through the child-Baudolino's first attempts at writing, do not worry too much - the rest of the novel isn't worth the effort.

Baudolino is 'adopted' at an early age by Frederick I, Holy Roman Emperor, who was impressed by his ability to read and write. Later, Baudolino is sent to Paris to study, where he meets various people who function as both clear and veiled references to historical figures from the time. He returns to Frederick and is part of an honour guard until the monarch's death under mysterious circumstances. From there, his Paris friends and a few others head East to the mythical lands of Prestor John. Eventually he returns to Constantinople, where he meets Nicetas Choniates, a Greek historian and tells the story of his life.

If I have glossed over the plot, it is because ultimately, it does not matter. The novel may be split into two parts, the first of which is involves Frederick, the second concerning the 'Twelve Wise Men's journey to Prestor John's land, but it is more honest to discuss the novel based on its two themes - deceit and history.

It should first be noted that Eco is a tremendously intelligent man, with an astonishing thirty honorary doctorates from universities around the world. He is a famous medievalist, and uses this knowledge as a base for the environs and times of Baudolino. This is fine - he manages to throw enough history and clever 'in' jokes into the mix to show that he is a smart man.

Now to the first theme, deceit. We are told, early on and throughout the novel, that Baudolino is a liar. The text shows this quite often, though it is surprising to note that for a novel written in the first person, as narrated by Baudolino to Nicetas, there is virtually no introspection, no thoughtful analysis, no internal dialogue. Baudolino is a man of action, though the action is poor.

So, a liar. Baudolino happens to be present at various points of significant historical interest, and it is through his self-serving and self-interested machinations that history progresses. For us, the twenty-first century reader, this is clever, because we know the truth, as it were. But it is dishonest. Baudolino makes up a variety of events and items to prove the existence of Prestor John, including creating the Holy Grail from the drinking bowl of his dead father. We chortle because everyone back then was so superstitious, we chortle because the Grail is a Big Deal even day, but ultimately, the laughter is empty. What is the point of such deceit? Is it to consider ourselves more clever and better than the people of those times? Is it to believe that Baudolino himself is more clever than anyone else? If yes, why do we care? Baudolino is a personality-less archetype, that of the wanderer. As above, there are no insights into his thoughts or motives, and his adventures aren't exciting enough to excuse this omission.

To continue further: Baudolino was educated in Paris. He could read and write in many languages. He would have known the grand scale to which his deception would reach, and yet he was willing to deceive the Church. Why? His character showed no great dislike towards religion. The argument could be put forth that it was to further honour Frederick, to enhance his greatness but again, why? The character, as shown, does not display, in thought or word, much gratification for what Frederick did to him. It is too large a leap to expect the reader to believe that a man who, throughout the narrator of his story never really praises his adopted father, would go to such world-changing lengths for him.

The second theme involves mythology. Eco draws heavily from the Nuremberg Chronicles, an early illustrated world history that is one of the best surviving examples of an early printed book. The Nuremberg Chronicles is filled with all manner of wondrous creatures: the skiapod, with its one great foot that it uses to hope along at tremendous speeds; the blemmyes, or people who have no head but a face in their chest, and so forth.

Baudolino encounters these and many other mythical creatures throughout his travels. Can we believe him? No. But, that isn't necessarily a bad thing. In the hands of a good author, mythological creatures are just fine. And Eco is a good author, right? No, not in this novel. He describes the weird and wonderful creatures, and then they become little more than jokes. Only one, a skiapod named Gavagai, develops a personality, but it is a joke personality. He speaks in stilted, child-like dialogue, and functions primarily as a guide throughout the world of monsters.

I suppose it is nice that Eco is writing a novel that draws heavily from the Nuremberg Chronicles, just as I suppose it is nice that he weaves history and myth into his story of the 13th century, but the question that must be asked is: Why am I bothering reading this book?

At the end we find out. A character says, 'in a great history little truths can be altered so that the greater truth emerges.', and the text of the novel supports this. Does it matter that Baudolino lied about probably everything that ever happened to him? No, it does not. If a greater truth is revealed, it doesn't matter how many lies are told. But Eco has no greater truth. The idea that history changes based on our perception is not new, nor is it worthy of devoting an entire book.

Perhaps the worst part of this novel is that there are other authors who write historical fiction better than this. Generally, a lot of what is written is pulpy, but the authors usually provide a strong plot, strong characters, and no end of excitement. Take that away, and we have a history book. Sadly, Eco doesn't even provide this, because the history we have is too full of lies, and what is true is not fully explained. In the end, we have a book that could have been done better by almost anyone, and which has virtually no reason to exist whatsoever. Eco is a better writer than this book shows.

a tall tale
Eco certainly knows how to spin a tale, and this is what he has done here, using the character of Baudolino to tell stories (or lies?) all the way through the book. Full of fantastic detail, the book's 500+ pages are also filled with long discussions about belief, religion, philosophy, poetry, the vacuum ... and much more besides. This can become tedious, and often the dialogues are long-winded. Nevertheless, at times it is a gripping tale, somewhere between medieval adventure and fantasy with a good dash of religion, love, battles and lots and lots of history.