Talks & Entertainment

Nineteenth-century Europe—from Turin to Prague to Paris—abounds with the ghastly and the mysterious. Conspiracies rule history. Jesuits plot against Freemasons. Italian republicans strangle priests with their own intestines. French criminals plan bombings by day and celebrate Black Masses at night. Every nation has its own secret service, perpetrating forgeries, plots, and massacres.

From the unification of Italy to the Paris Commune to the Dreyfus Affair to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Europe is in tumult and everyone needs a scapegoat. But what if, behind all of these conspiracies both real and imagined, lay one lone man? What if that evil genius created its most infamous document?

The Prague Cemetery is an unforgettable journey through the underbelly of world-shattering events. Eco is the author of five bestselling novels and numerous collections of essays. He lives in Italy and is a professor of semiotics at the University of Bologna.

Eco will be interviewed by Keith Donohue, a local novelist and the author of The Stolen Child, Angels of Destruction, and Centuries of June.