In the year 1992 an unsuccessful writer gets a job in an unconventional newspaper in Milan, sponsored by a media magnate who intents to use it to force his way into politics and if this rings a bell, this is a case of fiction where any similarities to real persons are not purely coincidental.
When a member of the editorial team, will trust our hero with details of a story about the shady events surrounding the execution of Benito Mussolini and his mistress, near lake Como, things will get complicated.
How can a newspaper issue that will never be published explain the connection between the spoliered body of Duce exposed at the square of Piazzale Loreto , with the assassination of Aldo Moro, the Piazza Fontana Bombing, and the assassination attempt against pope John Paul II?
I don’t know if “Numero Zero” will successfully answer all these questions but I do know that you will enjoy every page of this plausibility mind-game, challenging you to discover where facts stop and myth begins, and how immune have we become to atrocity.
Umberto Eco, the Italian philosopher and author of 6 books among which “Foucault’s Pendulum” and “The Name of the Rose,” is back with a surprisingly (considering the writers standards) slim novel that some critics described as satirical.
Conspiracy theories parody or not, this book certainly gives Eco the opportunity to decry means and institutions that had a hand in nourishing the moral and cultural decadence that followed during the next decades in Italy and elsewhere and had their bits on the present situation in Europe .
“Numero Zero” was originally published in Italy in January where it is already a best seller, with rights sold in 34 countries, while the English translation is expected to be released in the U.S.A and the U.K. in November.