It is a peculiar kind of novel where the difficult ideas are more interesting than the swashbuckling, or the sex, or the death, or the gruesome objects. When Liutprand is hunting in the forest near Forum, and his nephew Aufusus is accidentally injured by an arrow, the king sends to Baodolinus asking him to pray for the life of the boy. The fourth novel by the prolific Italian novelist Umberto Eco (1932–2016) charts the adventurous life of the eponymous hero, a medieval adventurer and consummate liar with a gift for making the most of chance. Eco is in a long line of fantastical Italian authors of whom the latest is Carlo Rovelli with his stories of warped space-time and quanta which are simultaneously there and not there; both theories being proven but cannot both be true. My experience of Umberto Eco has been mixed - loved 'Name of the Rose', hated ' Island of the Day Before'.

He's often torn between the loyalty to his emperor and to his friends, his love, his parents, forced to ponder the consequences of his actions. He is first mentioned in the Historia Langobardorum (English: History of the Lombards) which was written some forty years after his death by Paul the Deacon. Discover the Middle Ages with Baudolino - a wondrous, dazzling, beguiling tale of history, myth and invention. Some of Kipling's stories come perhaps closest, but he never had the depth of detailed knowledge that Eco has. You see, Baudolino, an imaginary adopted son of emperor Frederick Barbarossa (who is a real historical figure, by the way), is a bit of a trickster.Please include what you were doing when this page came up and the Cloudflare Ray ID found at the bottom of this page. He's a cunning and imaginitive fabricator of religious mysteries, yes, but he soon discovers that the world is inhabited by liars far more cruel and accomplished than he. Umberto Eco (born 5 January 1932) is an Italian novelist, medievalist, semiotician, philosopher, and literary critic. This part involves an element of secret history – the book asserts that Emperor Frederick had not drowned in a river, as history records, but died mysteriously at night while hosted at the castle of a sinister Armenian noble.

Baudolino is a forger of fictions - his love poems resemble Cyrano, he makes up a letter from the legendary Prester John, ruler of a fabulous faraway land, and devises imaginary maps of the known or speculative world. Eco’s trademark games with language and narrative structure are just as apparent in Baudolino as they are in his previous novels, as is the humor with which he broaches these difficult ideas about history and language. It is held together by being, at one of its levels, a sustained parody of a Sherlock Holmes investigation.Forty years later, during his career as a stylite near Byzantium, Eco has his hero perform a miracle of clairvoyance modelled closely on that of the saint. Baodolinus is described there as “a man of wonderful holiness…who was distinguished for many miracles”, and as having been endowed with the gifts of clairvoyance and prophecy. This act marks the beginning of the quest that dominates Baudolino’s life; he dedicates all his energies to locating the magical kingdom of Prester John, but he and his friends only set off on their journey after the death of Frederick in 1190. He constructs elaborate lies about his life and his involvement in historical events, but we are carried away by the sheer innovation of Baudolino’s implausible narration.