Foucault's Pendulum
Umberto Eco
Mar 2007 · Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
3.9star
285 reviews
Ebook
658
Pages
About this ebook
A literary prank leads to deadly danger in this “endlessly diverting” intellectual thriller by the author of The Name of the Rose (Time).
Bored with their work, three Milanese book editors cook up an elaborate hoax that connects the medieval Knights Templar with occult groups across the centuries. Becoming obsessed with their own creation, they produce a map indicating the geographical point from which all the powers of the earth can be controlled—a point located in Paris, France, at Foucault’s Pendulum.
But in a fateful turn the joke becomes all too real. When occult groups, including Satanists, get wind of the Plan, they go so far as to kill one of the editors in their quest to gain control of the earth. Orchestrating these and other diverse characters into his multilayered semiotic adventure, Umberto Eco has created a superb cerebral entertainment.
"An intellectual adventure story…sensational, thrilling, and packed with arcana."—The Washington Post Book World
Bored with their work, three Milanese book editors cook up an elaborate hoax that connects the medieval Knights Templar with occult groups across the centuries. Becoming obsessed with their own creation, they produce a map indicating the geographical point from which all the powers of the earth can be controlled—a point located in Paris, France, at Foucault’s Pendulum.
But in a fateful turn the joke becomes all too real. When occult groups, including Satanists, get wind of the Plan, they go so far as to kill one of the editors in their quest to gain control of the earth. Orchestrating these and other diverse characters into his multilayered semiotic adventure, Umberto Eco has created a superb cerebral entertainment.
"An intellectual adventure story…sensational, thrilling, and packed with arcana."—The Washington Post Book World
Ratings and reviews
3.9
285 reviews
Ned Kelly
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November 22, 2013
This book is brilliant, weird and beautiful and you will find that you have a more than passing interest in the Knights Templar and some other strange topics when you finish reading it. A masterpiece from one of the modern masters of fiction.
A Google user
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January 4, 2013
Ultimately a let-down compared to The Name of the Rose (which was great). It's interesting but I thought quite overlong, and while the labyrinth of conspiracy theories is certainly enough to get lost in, it was much less engaging than the mystery at the heart of the N of the R. Perhaps students of semiotics would enjoy it more but it left me a little disappointed. Separately from the content of the novel, the Google Play version is full of typos, which don't impede understanding but which are quite annoying.
1 person found this review helpful
A Google user
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November 6, 2012
Foucault's Pendulum has been favorite book for nearly two decades. First picked it up as a junior in high school when a literature teacher described it as the hardest book in the English language. I don't know if that claim is true, but Eco officially blew my mind.
About the author
UMBERTO ECO (1932–2016) was the author of numerous essay collections and seven novels, including The Name of the Rose,The Prague Cemetery, and Inventing the Enemy. He received Italy’s highest literary award, the Premio Strega, was named a Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur by the French government, and was an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
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