Baudolino

Eco, Umberto

ISBN 10: 1402528140 ISBN 13: 9781402528149

Publisher: Recorded Books, 2002

Synopsis

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.

About this title

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

Review

"A whirlwind of an adventure- and has everything - myths, marvels, monsters, murders, mysteries" (Financial Times)

"Here is the Eco of The Name of the Rose...poised, mischievous and erudite, the fruit of extraordinary knowledge" (Washington Post)

"[Eco] has given us, in the book's central character, a grand and sympathetic figure in the tradition of Candide and Sancho Panza" (Independent on Sunday)

"Mixing pages of intellectual discussion and exhilarating comedy - further reveals Eco's practically inexhaustible erudition" (Irish Times)

"A richly entertaining novel" (Sunday Times)

About this edition

• Publisher: Recorded Books
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 1402528140
• ISBN 13: 9781402528149
• Binding: Audio Cassette