Product Description

Eco returns to the Middle Ages with Baudolino - a wondrous, provocative, beguiling tale of history, myth, and invention. 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 skill in relling 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. As always with Eco, this abundant novel includes dazzling digressions, outrageous tricks, pages of extraordinary feeling and poetry, and vicarious reflections on our postmodern age. Baudolino is an utterly marvelous tale by the inimitable author of The Name of the Rose.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #109404 in Books
• Published on: 2002-10-15
• Original language: Italian
• Binding: Hardcover
• 512 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
In Baudolino the ever ingenious Umberto Eco draws on the medieval legends surrounding Prester John--a mythical Christian emperor of the Far East--to create a sprawling, picaresque adventure yarn.

The eponymous Baudolino is the book's hero and chief, although deeply unreliable, narrator. After a brief foray into Baudolino's youthful attempts at autobiography, the novel opens in Constantinople in 1204, at the time of the Fourth Crusade. Baudolino has helped Niketas Choniates, the chancellor of the basileus of Byzantium, to flee the city. As the men make their way to safety Baudolino begins to recount, with numerous digressions and contradictions, his extraordinary life story. Born an Italian peasant, Baudolino claims to have been adopted as a boy by the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa. Sent to Paris to learn "the art of saying well that which may or may not be true" Baudolino fell in with a band of good fellows and fell in love with his stepmother. After being embroiled in the canonisation of Charlemagne; finding the sacred remains of the Magi and helping Frederick with a siege or two, Baudolino and chums, armed with the Holy Grail, set off on a particularly monster strewn journey to find the holy Prestor John. Teaming with Eco's customary metafictional games, intellectual jokes and elaborate (and even ludicrous) theological discussions, this novel is possibly his most accessible, and arguably enjoyable, since The Name of the Rose. --Travis Elborough

From the Publisher
An extraordinary, epic, brilliantly-imagined, new novel from a world-class writer.
Baudolino is the closest of Eco’s novels to The Name of the Rose in terms of theme and setting.

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 Wonderful, intelligent book.
My experience of Umberto Eco has been mixed - loved 'Name of the Rose', hated ' Island of the Day Before'. However, I consider Baudolino to be a cracking return to form for a talented and inspirational writer.
It is the early C13, and young italian peasant is adopted by the Holy Roman Emperor, setting into motion a chain of events that will have profound consequences on the entirety of Christian Europe.
Eco uses an enteraining narrative to dwell at length upon ideas he also covers in his 'Serendipities'; language, Prester john, lies, and errors that create history. Like George MacDonalnd Fraser, Eco looks at history through the skewed eye of a born cheat, liar and charlatan with a gift for languages and an eye for the ladies. In Baudolino, Eco has created a worthy literary rival to Frasers' 'Flashman' and, like Flashman, Baudolino inadvertently becomes embroiled in great events of his own accidental making.
this is a book for the intellect (Eco doesn't spare you from thinking), the reader (it's trendously well written), and the funny bone (Baudolinos escapades are as funny as anything in Flashman).
Overall, heatily recommended.

FLUID PROSE AND PROVOCATIVE THOUGHTS
Renaissance man Umberto Eco continues to enthrall with a return to the era he so masterfully painted in "The Name Of The Rose." An intrepid, nonparallel story teller he again visits the Middle Ages with Baudolino, a marvelous blend of history and imagination.

It is April 1204 and a northern Italian peasant, Baudolino, is in Constantinople, the resplendent capital of the Byzantine Empire. The city staggers under the relentless onslaught of the knights of the Fourth Crusade who pillage and burn. Oblivious to his own safety Baudolino rescues an important personage, a historian from sure death at the hands of the marauding warriors. This is the person to whom Baudolino recounts his life story - a colorful narrative laced with fantasy and adventure.

Although of humble birth, we learn that Baudolino is rich in two areas: the art of inspired prevarication and an aptitude for learning languages. When still a youngster he was adopted by Emperor Frederick Barbarossa who later sent the boy to the university in Paris. Affable and quick, Baudolino soon made friends in France with those who shared his somewhat reckless taste for adventure.

Together a group of them journey to the east and embark upon a search for a mythical priest-king, Prester John. It is believed that Prester John's domain is a fabled land inhabited by eunuchs, unicorns, beautiful maidens, and bizarre beings with misplaced orifices.

As is his wont the unsurpassed Eco weaves his story with ruminations of weighty matters such as theology, politics, government, and history. He does this with fluid prose and provocative thoughts that inevitably draw readers into the author's unique land of enchantment, a magical place that one is reluctant to leave.

The Lie, the Fantasy, and Recorded History as Fact?
Expect the unexpected from Eco. Playful with words, concepts, and history, Eco will twist your conception of Emperor Friedrich Barbarossa, his court, the third and fourth Crusades, paradise on Earth, religious dogma, relics and their sources, till it becomes difficult to tell the real from the unreal. So much so that when two thirds into the book Eco changes from his variant of history to an out and out Cabellian fantasy, complete with unicorns and other less savory creatures, it comes across as merely another short step in the journey of his accomplished liar and linguist protagonist Baudolino.

And what a main character Baudolino is! For every major historical event, from Barbarossa's sieges and compromises with various Italian cities and popes to the discovery and placement of the Three Magi of Cologne, Baudolino is not only there, he is the major instigator. From the opening of the book, when we meet him as a young boy worming his way into Friedrich's graces with his quick wit and tongue, Baudolino is an engaging rascal, full of himself and his own (justified) ability to turn the course of history with a well crafted falsified parchment here, a poem (as presented as by someone else) there, or a quiet word with the Emperor carefully couched in just the language the Emperor wishes to hear.

But this also brings up one of Eco's major themes of this book, on just what is real and true. If people believe in it, does it matter that the relic worshiped as the Holy Grail is actually a common wooden bowl? If the lie will serve a greater good, is it really a lie? If someone, somewhere, declares that something exists, then does it really have an existence? Where is the line between fantasy and reality? Of course, at the same time that Eco is investigating these points, he is also rather savagely satirizing various religious beliefs and demonstrating the hilarity of the life and death dissension of various religious sects over incredibly tiny differences of interpretation of some element of dogma.

As usual, Eco is not an easy read. Besides his liberal sprinkling of Latin, German, and other languages throughout the text, the ideas and history he is presenting are not for the faint of heart or one totally ignorant of this period. Without at least some knowledge of this historical period and Catholic religious dogma, a good portion of what he is saying will be overlooked. A good dictionary should also be a constant companion while reading this, as he often uses some very uncommon words, and sometimes intends some of the lesser known meanings of other more common words.

There are some elements that don't totally work here. I felt his inclusion of a locked room murder mystery within the main body of the work was not really necessary from either a plot or character development standpoint, and plot elements that are linked to this could have easily been handled differently. This element almost seemed like it was tacked on as an expected thing for an Eco novel. The long fantasy section seemed to go on much too long, with rather tiresome long lists of the various creatures and their characteristics. Most of the characters other than Baudolino seem rather two-dimensional, and if they had been given some further rounding, I think Eco's satirical side could have been sharpened. None of these faults are really major, but they do detract somewhat from what is otherwise an outstanding novel.

Different, difficult, discerning, and ultimately deserving of an attentive read.

--- Reviewed by Patrick Shepherd (hyperpat)