Numero Zero: An Acclaimed Political Thriller Unraveling Mussolini's Conspiracy, Media Hoaxes, and Italian History

Numero Zero: An Acclaimed Political Thriller Unraveling Mussolini's Conspiracy, Media Hoaxes, and Italian History

<DIV><B><I>#1 Italian bestseller</I></B><BR />  <BR /> “Witty and wry . . . It’s hard not to be charmed.” — <I>New York Times Book Review</I><BR /><BR /> “One of the most influential thinkers of our time.” — <I>Los Angeles Times</I><BR />  <BR /><B>1945, Lake Como.</B> Mussolini and his mistress are captured and shot by local partisans. The precise circumstances of Il Duce’s death remain controversial.<BR />  <BR /><B>1992, Milan.</B> Colonna, a depressed hack writer, is offered a fee he can’t resist to ghostwrite a book. His subject: a fledgling newspaper, which happens to be financed by a powerful media magnate. As Colonna gets to know the team, he learns of the editor’s paranoid theory that Mussolini’s corpse was a body double and part of a wider Fascist plot. It’s the scoop the newspaper desperately needs. The evidence? He’s working on it.<BR />  <BR /> It’s all there: media hoaxes, Mafiosi, the CIA, the Pentagon, blackmail, love, gossip, and murder. A clash of forces that have shaped Italy since World War II — from Mussolini to Berlusconi. “Farcical, serious, satiric, and tragic” (<I>Le Point, </I>France), <I>Numero Zero</I> is the work of a master storyteller.<BR />  <BR /> UMBERTO ECO (1932–2016) was the author of numerous essay collections and seven novels, including <I>The Name of the Rose,</I><I>The Prague Cemetery,</I> and <I>Inventing the Enemy.</I> 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</DIV>