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    Numero Zero
    Numero Zero
    Numero Zero
    Audiobook5 hours

    Numero Zero

    Written by Umberto Eco

    Narrated by David Colacci

    3/5

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    About this audiobook

    Numero Zero is the feverish and delightfully readable tale of a ghostwriter in Milan whose work pulls him into an underworld of media politics and murderous conspiracies (involving the cadaver of Mussolini's double, naturally.) This novel is vintage Eco-corrupt newspapers, clandestine plots, imaginary histories-and will appeal to his many readers and earn him legions of new ones. Umberto Eco is the 83-year-old Italian novelist best known for the international bestseller The Name of the Rose, published in 1980. The murder mystery set in a 14th-century monastery was made into a film starring Sean Connery and Christian Slater. His other books include several works of literary criticism and the bestselling novels Foucault's Pendulum, Baudolino, and his most recent, The Prague Cemetery.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateNov 3, 2015
    ISBN9781490699172
    Author

    Umberto Eco

    Umberto Eco (1932–2016) was the author of numerous essay collections and seven novels, including The Name of the Rose, The Prague Cemetery, and Inventing the Enemy. 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.

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    Reviews for Numero Zero

    3/5

    296 ratings25 reviews

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    • 3/5
      Some good writing and humor, but kind of disappointing. I lot of the stuff that was supposed to be funny seemed pretty weak. Three and a half stars, I guess.
    • 2/5
      Having read and liked The Name of the Rose, I decided to try another book by Umberto Eco. This book is not in the same league. It satirizes conspiracy theories and the manipulation of the populace to believe in them. The premise sounded promising – the possibility that a body double was assassinated instead of Mussolini. Unfortunately, the execution falls flat. It reads like contemporary fiction, which I was not expecting. The romance is insipid. The plot is scattered, skipping to different scenes with little context, so it was sometimes difficult to keep track of what was going on. It is short and reads almost like a screenplay, except the dialogue is long and rambling. I just did not connect with it.
    • 3/5
      Reminiscent of my favorite book, Foucault's Pendulum, in that it involves convoluted conspiracies and a man who knows too much, but sadly, it’s nowhere near as good. It does, however, make a satisfying jab at people’s apathy and acceptance of “fake news.”
    • 3/5
      A return to some of the themes from Foucault's Pendulum, but in a lot of ways a pale sort of return. Now conspiracy theories ARE taken seriously, and are the playthings of the rich and powerful, rather than being the half-articulate protests of the frustrated, the paranoid and the resentful.Foucault's Pendulum was sort of a dark book. In this book the dark forces we could see in FP have made huge progress. Somehow, though, Eco doesn't seem to have the spirit in him to build a great story around them this time.
    • 1/5
      This is so bad.I love Eco, but this book is really really bad.Let me sum up the entire book in one short sentence: [spoiler]Main character meets a guy who tells him his conspiracy theory, and then when they guy is murdered the main character is afraid he might get murdered too because he knows the guy's conspiracy theory, but then he sees a BBC documentary about the same conspiracy theory so everything must be okay.[/spoiler]To add insult to injury, on top of this totally asinine and non-existent plot, we have the awful trope of middle-aged mediocre dude wins the gorgeous young brainiac woman for no apparent reason.
    • 2/5
      A light thriller from a famous author, this one fell a little flat for me. It reminded me at times of Carl Hiaasen's Basket Case, but I enjoyed that one more. The premise is overly complicated. A man wants to create a fake newspaper that will investigate scandals in Italy. There's a romance with a younger woman and a mystery involving the possible faking of Mussolini's death. There were amusing moments, but not enough to leave a lasting impression. Read The Name of the Rose instead for a much more fulfilling mystery.
    • 4/5
      So in the general context of Eco's oeuvre this is pretty light fare - what Grahame Greene would have classed an "entertainment". But as a final sally from the pen of one of Europe's last true public intellectuals its still pretty powerful. The novel is a kick in the pants to three key targets. Firstly the Italian press, a body Eco is well familiar with having been a columnist for many years - he portrays them as controlled by vested interests, manipulating public opinion, cynical in the extreme. Secondly the status quo - dismissive of younger and more diverse voices, as represented by the young journalist Maie. And finally Italian government as a whole. The whole Mussolini conspiracy thread is clearly farcical - and yet, Eco suggests, it could be true. How can you logically explain the dead hand of the elites on public life, without a good conspiracy to explain it? Possibly this book has more resonance to Italian readers than non Italian but for the rest of us, its still entertaining enough - Eco is back in familiar territory weaving true events into a silky cogent thread of conspiracy . Yes the love scenes are a bit clunky but overall we are still hooked in. Not Eco's best book but better than most. We'll miss him
    • 3/5
      I loved the buildup and idea of this novel: creating a newspaper that will guess/investigate upcoming scandals. But it's not meant to ever exist--it is meant to get the creator/owner into the "inner circle" of publishers. By scaring the existing paper publishers with his incredible newspaper that will not report what has happened, but what might happen. And to do this, his team will create 12 "fake" papers based on past dates. Because it's easy to predict the news when it is in the past. And the paper isn't really the point at all--it's actually to be a book on the fake paper that will be ghostwritten by one of the staff. Only the editor and the staff writer know this. It all sounds so absurd.And then one of the editors begins researching a conspiracy theory involving Mussolini, his double, the WWII left-behinds, the CIA, the Vatican, Argentina, etc. His fellow staff think it sounds crazy (and suspect he is crazy).Great build up, but I found the ending to be a let down. That guy ends up dead. Was it random, or did the CIA/Mafia shut him up? "Paper" is shuttered. But then the BBC has a documentary that is even crazier than his theories--complete with participant interviews. So was his murder random after all?
    • 4/5
      The latest novel by Eco (and his death a little while after I read it made it also his last) consists of two narratives - separated by decades but still managing to weave around each other. In the present (which Eco sets at the early 1990s), a newspaper editor is contracted to create a new newspaper. But it is an unusual paper - instead of publishing real test issues, they are instructed to publish the yesterday's news, with yesterday's date - as if they were writing at the day the news happened but the knowledge and the understanding of the day after that. As can be expected, this allows them to print things that noone had never had a chance to - foreknowledge is important. Noone will ever really publish those issues and it is not very clear why they are done this way - the editor may have an idea, his team is really in the dark. And when bad things start happening, an old story emerges - the story of Mussolini and the end of the war; a story that may or may not have been. I do not know enough about Italian history to know how much of that story is true and how much is invented by Eco (or other authors) but the story reads as one that could have been, maybe even one that had been. The story in the 90s is an exploration of the power of news and responsibility of the press. Setting it at these time allows the research and the printing to be based on the old technologies; it also makes sure that there are no blogs and internet sites that publish when the news break - after all this is as close as we are getting to the news written from the future. If you look at this this way, one wonders if this is not what Eco was planning altogether - putting the story in the 90s makes a bit more sense. But it still does not fully succeed - it gets too long and almost boring at places. The Italy of the 90s is coming alive in the text and that helps - but it still is a bit too thin.On the other hand, the past story is fascinating and for me, that story makes the whole book worth reading. I suspect that I will be revisiting this book in the future - it may not have as many layers as some of his earlier ones but I have a suspicion that I missed some of the ones that are in the book. I would not recommend that as the first Eco book to read but if you enjoy his style, it is a decent addition to his works.
    • 3/5
      Should I consider it a coincidence or a conspiracy that I finished this book on the same day the new X-Files series started. It felt like I had conspiracy theorists up to my chin!Colonna is a writer who starts to work for a new newspaper called Domani. The idea of the publisher is to print yesterday's news with yesterday's date today so that everyone would think the paper foretold the future. No conspiracy there!Most of the book is Colonna's boss going on and on about what really happened with Mussolini and Pope Paul I. Nothing that was reported is true. Everything is a big government conspiracy. Etc. Etc. Etc. No idea was too remote or utterly stupid to be considered truth. The only thing they knew was that what had been reported was not truth.The narrator reminded me of George Carlin with his gravelly and cynical tone. It was pretty much the same for every speaker except for when he was the voice for Colonna's girlfriend. And my opinion of George Carlin is that he is great - in small amounts at a time.This might appeal to someone with more background in Italian history than me.
    • 3/5
      Well, that was an alright read, with some interesting content... but it's not going to go down in history as one of Eco's major novels. As a matter of fact, I hesitate to classify it as a novel. It's more like one of Eco's essays, fleshed out with a bit of plot.

      The premise: in 1990s Italy, a journalist, Colonna, is hired to work at a news magazine that, he's told up front, will never actually be published. The concept will instead be used to achieve the publisher's political ends, by making certain parties afraid of what the paper MIGHT choose to expose, when it launches. But of course, to make it look like a real business, staffers are required. A motley crew of media misfits are assembled. However, one of them, the paranoid Braggadocio, comes up with a far-fetched conspiracy theory involving military scandal and secrets reaching right up to the Vatican. The idea seems like pure fantasy - but when a very real murder occurs, it seem like someone might want Braggadocio's ideas kept silent. As someone who's known to have listened to his stories, Colonna is now in fear for his life...

      The plot summary makes the book sound a bit more exciting than it is. The majority of it is commentary on the news media and its place and function in our society. There are some very funny, witty and insightful bits - but I feel like I probably missed some of it, due to it being very clearly intended for an Italian audience. The 1990s setting made it also feel strangely out-of-date: with the advent of the internet, news reporting has changed a LOT, and it seems like Eco intentionally put his story in the past because he didn't want to deal with any of that at all. it would have required a more complex book, because the dynamics between publisher, journalist, subject and audience which this book deals with are all affected by the changes that have happened over the past decades.
    • 3/5
      An interesting conspiracy story.
      Was Mussolini executed or was he spirited away.
      I prefer "The Name of the Rose", but this is OK.
      I was given a digital copy by the publisher via Netgalley in return for an honest unbiased review.
    • 2/5
      I am posting only to fulfill an obligation to the Early Review program of LT. While I enjoyed The Year of the Rose long ago when I read it, I have never been able to finish any of Eco's subsequent works, and this one is no exception. I could not understand the premise, couldn't warm to the characters, and found the story line and setting flat, uninspiring and sadly, not worth my time. I have donated the audio book to my local library hoping that someone else will decide it is worthy of reading. Not for me.
    • 3/5
      This was an interesting book to listen to. Eco is a remarkably talented writer and the narrator on the audiobook did a good job. But all the Italian political intrigue went over my head and the ending was abrupt and unsatisfying. I received a copy of this audiobook through the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program in return for my honest review.
    • 3/5
      Way too convoluted unless you know Italian politics and like conspiracy theories (or spoofs thereof). Library book.
    • 2/5
      There is little to praise in this concoction of conspiracies except to say that when Eco nests a story within the story of his book, he does so seamlessly. This very short work is a book about a group of losers brought together to serve a master who is conspiring to blackmail powerful politicians and public figures so that he can be elected to office by using a fictitious newspaper that will publish fictitious news, incriminating rumors, and useless information but will never be distributed.The central character who tells this story is himself told a conspiracy tale by a colleague concerning a conspiracy to deceive the world with Mussolini's faked death, sequester him in Argentina, and return him to Italy and "life" when a fascist figurehead is needed to assure the success of right wing extremists' plans to take over the Italian government, if not the world. It is the protagonist's job to write the "history" of all that occurs while their conspiracy to create a newspaper devoted to recycling information unfolds, resulting in the election of their master who is intimated to be associated with the conspirators' ultimately unsuccessful effort..The book lacks motivated action, true plot, and character development. But it does tease the reader as to its purpose, beyond weaving together nested conspiracies. The best light one can shine on Numero Zero is that Eco wanted to show how the average man can easily succumb to conspiracies when actual news is subsumed by concocted information; when one wealthy person controls the non-news to make sure it is a useful tool for him, and how a grizzled insider (a reporter) can be seduced by the cocktail of coincidence and imagination and fall prey to conspiratorial thinking himself.The thrill in this advertised thriller happens when a member of the staff is stabbed to death in an alley; it is the narrator's colleague who has been spinning the story of what 'really" happened to Mussolini. By a twist of fate and the turn of the TV dial, it becomes apparent that the dead man's death is not a consequence of his involvement in "uncovering" this conspiracy. In fact, he may have just decided to recycle a BBC documentary to which he had advance access into a non-story that would be fit to print in issue "Numero 0" of the company of losers' nonexistent newspaper. End of thrill. None of this is sufficient to make a novel. I'm disappointed that Eco saw fit to send this to his publisher. I'm even more disappointed that they saw fit to publish it. Unless, of course, Eco is tweaking us with his non-novel that he knows is not a novel and knows should not be understood as a one, but as a piece of meta-fiction. Wish I could.
    • 2/5
      Billed as a conspiracy thriller, ‘Numero Zero’, is the portray of a rather loopy conspiracy theory. Unfortunately, it has almost no narrative drive. It consists almost entirely of one person telling another person about something that has happened. Usually a thriller involves suspense and action, two elements which are sorely lacking here. As a satirical poke at Italy’s former Prime Minister it is more successful, and the premise of setting up a fake newspaper for blackmail purposes is rather entertaining, but overall it falls flat.
    • 3/5
      This was well-written and started right in on the thriller, but then it became more about the politics and manipulation behind the newspaper business with a plausible conspiracy theory thrown in, but not much plot.
    • 2/5
      NUMERO UNO is a satire of Italian politics and modern media strategies wrapped in Eco’s trademark conspiracy motif. The plot revolves around a fanciful attempt to bilk a wealthy investor with aspirations of becoming a media mogul—vaguely evocative of Berlusconi. The farfetched idea is to make up stories that have a ring of truth and are vaguely threatening to this investor’s friends, associates and financial wellbeing. Domani—this is the name of the fictitious publication—will purport to publish these investigative pieces, but in fact will be just using them to extort lira from their mark. Eco assembles a cast of characters who have been working on the fringes of real journalism and spends an inordinate amount of time having them sit around brainstorming about possible bogus stories for Domani. These characters are interesting enough, but the novel is so short that none are never really well developed. Moreover, the potential stories seem fanciful and none are developed enough to really enjoy the humor that they might have stimulated. The narrator is Colonna, a middle-aged hack, who has been involved on the fringes of real journalism for his entire career. He is hired to ghostwrite an autobiography, a task that never really materializes. Eco introduces this idea, which shows some promise, but instead abruptly drops it. The novel takes on a more threatening tone when Braggadocio, one of Domani’s staff, stumbles onto a plot involving the death of Mussolini and a subsequent conspiracy that involves all sorts of outlandish plots involving murder and political machinations. The outcome of the novel seems to suggest that there may have been a grain of truth in Braggadocio’s finding, but it is never resolved.In addition to all of the conspiracy talk, the novel has a romance of sorts, but like the rest of it, this seems too superficial to be taken seriously. This short novel leaves one with the impression of an unfinished work that could have been quite interesting if Eco had invested the effort required to achieve that end. However, as the jazzmen say: “That's All There Is! There Ain't No More!”
    • 1/5
      Despite having a couple of Umberto Eco's novels on my TBR pile, I'd not yet actually read any of his works prior to this one. My impression was that Eco was a respected novelist, and I'm well aware that his The Name of the Rose has received many rave reviews. Numero Zero is more of a novella, and in this case, a 5-disc audiobook.I'm not sure what happened with this one. In short, it's awful. I read another review which describes this book as satire, and at a very long stretch, that might be the case, but if it is so, it's executed very poorly. The book was basically pointless rambling about the creation of a pseudo Italian newspaper with some questionable conspiracy theory thrown in. It was just very odd and made no sense to me whatsoever. The reader of the audiobook was mediocre, but he drove me crazy when using his female character voice. The only reason I finished this book was because it was short. And honestly, I really only half-listened to most of it. I rarely give up on a book & I rarely rate a book this low, but this one fit the bill.
    • 1/5
      I absolutely loved The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco. It still remains on my top 10 book list, but this book? I didn't get it, didn't understand any of it, and didn't finish it.
    • 3/5
      I love a good conspiracy theory story, but this one fell very flat for me. Instead of reading a story of a conspiracy theory happening, with mystery and suspense, it is written like I'm just having a conversation with a friend about his crazy ideas. For the most part it is boring, the characters are pointless, and the plot is a guy talking to another guy. Possibly if I knew more about Italian history this may have been more interesting. The narrator, David Colacci, does a decent job for the most part, but you can feel that he is a bit uninspired.
    • 4/5
      I love a good, complex conspiracy theory. I seldom believe them, but I love exploring them and speculating about Machiavellian schemes. So does Umberto Eco. His primary career is as Professor of Semiotics at the University of Bologna, and there is clearly an osmosis between that and his work as a novelist. He has already deconstructed the conspiracy theory with great verve in 'Foucault's Pendulum', a sprawling essay in lateral thinking that both predated and outperformed Dan Brown' 'The Da Vinci Code'. He revisits the genre again, more concisely and prosaically, in his latest novel, 'Numero Zero'. Set in 1992 the book represents the recollections of Colonna, a cynical hack journalist, who is offered a post to help in the preparations of a dummy newspaper for a successful businessman who is considering entering into that field.Colonna, having nothing better on the horizon, recruits a group of colleagues to help prepare their pseudo stories. This gives Eco the opportunity to parody some hardy perennials in the newspaper publishing world. One of the journalists recruited by Colonna, is Braggadocio, an investigative report who is himself a bit of an addict of the conspiracy theory. Having given an impassioned analysis of the proliferation of faux Masonic fraternities operating in Milan over the last century, Braggadocio turns to a more current investigation, and tries to convince Colonna of his potentially explosive theories about the conclusion of the Second World War, and a conspiracy permeating every level of Italian society.More accessible than many of his novels, this is a relatively easy read, and utterly gripping. My knowledge of post-war Italian history is non-existent, but Eco has made me want to look into it in detail, if only to appreciate the twists and turns in this novel even more fully.
    • 4/5
      I will read pretty much anything Umberto Eco publishes, and I'm always delighted when a new novel of his appears in English. In this one, much slimmer than his usual offerings, Eco returns to his frequent themes of conspiracy theories, Italian politics, media criticism, and biting satire of journalistic practices and ethics. I suspect those with more knowledge of Italian media and politics may get more out of this one than I did, but the connections to Berlusconi's rise to power are veiled thinly enough even for me to catch. Hilariously funny in many places, and spot-on with much of its evisceration of modern media practices, this is very much worth a read if you're interested in Eco's themes.
    • 4/5
      Numero Zero – The King of Conspiracy ReturnsQuite simply without Umberto Eco we would have had no Dan Brown and the wonder of the conspiracy theory at the heart of a novel. Numero Zero is his seventh novel and carries on in much the same vain as his previous books, even though the conspiracies seem crazy, they are crazy enough to be credible.Our narrator is the middle aged loser Colonna, a very much jaded hack at the end of his career, who is an expert at the lies the popular press like to peddle as fact. He has been hired to write ghost write an autobiography and help advise and edit on Domani, a new newspaper in Milan that will never be published.Numero Zero nicely blends fact and fiction in to the conspiracy that is at the heart of the book, from the summary execution of Mussolini at the end of the Italy’s war to the Red Brigade bomb and kidnapping campaigns of the 1970s. Even though this book is set in the Milan of 1992, when a new political party is rising to challenge the established order and the new politics and police that are challenging corruption at high levels.Domani, which means tomorrow in English, is a complete fantasy staffed by journalists that are hoping for something new, not realising that the publisher is a hotel and communications magnate. He will send a few select people of influence particular a copy to try and influence their opinion but will never be on general sale to the public.One of Colonna’s colleagues, Braggadocio is the king of the Mussolini conspiracy theory and is gathering the scoop of the century that his double was killed while the real Mussolini slipped away to live out his life in Argentina, and that the right-wing hoped to bring him back in 1970 but he died of old age. Colonna thinks his colleague is mad, but it is not until Braggadocio murdered that he thinks he may be on to something. But Colonna had been distracted by Maia who he thinks may be autistic.This is a wonderful book to read, short and punchy, a thriller wrapped up in the tricks of the tabloid press and ruthlessly examined. Even having a punch out at the reviewers who do not read the books they are reviewing, I cannot speak for others, but I read them!