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A review by daja57
Numero Zero by Umberto Eco
3.0
A group of journalistic hacks gather together to produce a dummy newspaper whose secret purpose is to gain for their millionaire sponsor access to the inner circles of high society (basically through the power of press blackmail). One of them spins conspiracy theories linking the CIA and right wing groups to the 'murder' of pope John Paul I and the 'mystery' of Mussolini's death. The paranoid narrator fears for his life.
The themes are, I suppose, truth and fake truth, and how a newspaper can dictate the agenda and create beliefs with hints and innuendos. There is the skeleton of a thriller plot. Much of the action seemed irrelevant. There were pages of what seemed like filling (and the novel is only 190 pages), such as the couple of pages in which the journalists made silly jokes, or the two pages of autopsy report. Most of the conspiracy theories were re-peddled from other sources.
The themes are, I suppose, truth and fake truth, and how a newspaper can dictate the agenda and create beliefs with hints and innuendos. There is the skeleton of a thriller plot. Much of the action seemed irrelevant. There were pages of what seemed like filling (and the novel is only 190 pages), such as the couple of pages in which the journalists made silly jokes, or the two pages of autopsy report. Most of the conspiracy theories were re-peddled from other sources.