Umberto Eco - The Prague Cemetery

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is one of the more justly reviled literary forgeries in history. Dated around the turn of the 20th century, it recounts an imaginary meeting between said evil Elders as they casually discuss the economic and religious subjugation of the earth by a global Jewish conspiracy. It has remained in circulation since, feeding the fevered hate dreams of notable anti-Semites like Hitler and Henry Ford. Its authorship has never been conclusively revealed, but novelist Umberto Eco has a few ideas about this.

In his latest novel, The Prague Cemetery, Eco tells the story of Simone Simonini, an unscrupulous Italian forger and opportunist who hates just about everyone – this includes, of course, the Jews. Simonini is, true to the author’s stated intent, one of the more repulsive characters you will ever meet, and as the novel moves forward, he becomes the force behind the insidious Protocols and their desired “final solution.”

Hannah Arendt’s notion regarding the “banality of evil” is apt when regarding Eco’s Simonini. Neither an evil genius nor a slavering maniac, Simonini is more concerned with the seasoning of his duck confit than he is with the fact that his work ruins (and ends) lives. Of course, banality doesn’t always make for the best fiction, and The Prague Cemetery is uneven at best. Simonini’s apparent schizophrenia and the resulting multiple narratives is a puzzling contrivance, and for all its conspiracies, the book is surprisingly dull. Eco takes a cheap shot at Dan Brown, but in trying to teach the reader a history lesson and also show how virulent hate and hysteria can be, a bit more Brown might have helped.

The Prague Cemetery Random House, Paperback RRP$32.95

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