Baudolino by Umberto Eco (English) Paperback Book

Description: Baudolino by Umberto Eco An extraordinary epic, brilliantly-imagined, new novel from a world-class writer and author of The Name of the Rose. Amid the carnage and confusion Baudolino saves a Byzantine historian and high court official from certain death at the hands of the crusading warriors, and proceeds to tell his own fantastical story. FORMAT Paperback LANGUAGE English CONDITION Brand New Publisher Description A totally compelling journey into a lost world - a masterpiece Sunday TelegraphAn extraordinary epic, brilliantly-imagined, new novel from a world-class writer and author of The Name of the Rose. Discover the Middle Ages with Baudolino - a wondrous, dazzling, beguiling tale of history, myth and invention.It is 1204, and Constantinople is being sacked and burned by the knights of the fourth Crusade. Amid the carnage and confusion Baudolino saves a Byzantine historian and high court official from certain death at the hands of the crusading warriors, and proceeds to tell his own fantastical story. Notes Discover the Middle Ages with Baudolino, a tale of history, myth and invention. Sold 70,000 copies in hardback. "has everything, myths, marvels, monsters, murders, mysteries" Financial Times. Author Biography Umberto Eco (1932-2016) wrote fiction, literary criticism and philosophy. His first novel, The Name of the Rose, was a major international bestseller. His other works include Foucaults Pendulum, The Island of the Day Before, Baudolino, The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana, The Prague Cemetery and Numero Zero along with many brilliant collections of essays. Review A whirlwind of an adventure- and has everything - myths, marvels, monsters, murders, mysteries * Financial Times *Here is the Eco of The Name of the Rose...poised, mischievous and erudite, the fruit of extraordinary knowledge * Washington Post *[Eco] has given us, in the books central character, a grand and sympathetic figure in the tradition of Candide and Sancho Panza * Independent on Sunday *Mixing pages of intellectual discussion and exhilarating comedy - further reveals Ecos practically inexhaustible erudition * Irish Times *A richly entertaining novel * Sunday Times * Promotional An extraordinary, epic, brilliantly-imagined new novel from a world-class writer. Kirkus UK Review Baudolino, son of a Ligurian peasant, adopted son of the Emperor Frederic Barbarossa, rescues Niketas, a Byzantine court official, during the Fourth Crusades sack of Constantinople in 1204 and during the succeeding days tells him his life story. It is a story, a game even, of two halves, for Baudolino is nothing if not ludic: ironic, parodic, fantastic, funny, tragic, occasionally tiresome, self-indulgent and above all playful. The first half recounts how Baudolino goes to school in Paris where he meets the friends who will accompany him on most of his adventures. The most notable of these is The Poet, identified with the historical Arch Poet. After Paris Baudolino drifts between Fredericks perambulating court as the emperor seeks to bind the reluctant cities of north Italy to the empire, and the people he grew up amongst, including his real father. A wooden cup belonging to his real father is taken to be the Grasal or Holy Grail and acts as the link to the second half. So far the story has inhabited a recreation of the period based on real events, with historical characters. But by now we have reached 1189, the Third Crusade. As they pass through Constantinople Baudolino and his friends, employed as Barbarossas closest minders, pick up Zosimos, a villain. Barbarossa dies mysteriously in a locked room, Baudolino and his friends fake his historical drowning and set off on a quest to find the kingdom of Prester John, a quest which is also a pursuit of Zosimos, the presumed assassin. At this point we leave the real world of the chronicles and enter that of Mandevilles Travels. Clearly Eco has mined Mandeville and the sources behind Mandeville - we meet the sciapodes, the anthropophagi, and even men whose heads grow beneath their shoulders, weird forests, rivers of stones and so on, all re-created here with often nightmareish vigour. Having survived all sorts of horrors Baudolino meets a Lady and her unicorn. She is an avatar of Hypatia, the neo-platonist murdered by Christian monks in 415, who reveals to him a neo-platonic vision of the Unique which chimes with much modern thinking about the nature of the creative impulse we used to call god. In short we are back with Ecos main concerns as a philosopher and even mystic, which informed, in a more discreet way, The Name of the Rose. Baudolino plays with philosophy, physics and metaphysics, geology, minerology, theology, just about every -ology you can think of. It is outrageously inventive, outrageously derivative. Yet the characters of Baudolino, The Poet, Barbarossa, Zosimos, the sciapode Gavagai and finally Hypatia herself are deeply realized and give the whole rambling mass a unity and human interest which make it Ecos most approachable book since The Name of the Rose. Force-fed as we are by anglophone realism (pace Pullman et al.), it reminds us how boundless the possibilities of extended fiction are. Finally,William Weavers translation allows us to forget it is a translation, and one cant say better than that. Julian Rathbones latest novel is A Very English Agent. (Kirkus UK) Kirkus US Review An adventurer who boasts of his proficiency as a liar unburdens his colorful history to a skeptical Greek historian during the siege of Constantinople in a.d. 1204: in this erudite and intermittently sluggish fourth novel from the philosopher-semiotician author (Foucaults Pendulum, 1989, etc.). The eponymous Baudolino, a resourceful cross between Voltaires Candide and Thomas Bergers "Little Big Man," is a lively enough narrator who regales his exhausted hearer (one Niketas Choniates) with the story of Baudolinos agreeably misspent youth, his accidental meeting with warlord emperor Frederick Barbarossa, and the remarkable events that ensue when Frederick effectively adopts the clever stripling (possessed of "the gift of tongues") and sends him to study in Paris. Bonding with several fellow students (including a moony would-be "Poet," a love-starved half-Moor, and a pragmatic rabbinical scholar), Baudolino thereafter undertakes to compose a history of his benefactors exploits, helps defend a defiant city created to withstand Fredericks anticipated sacking of it, and conceives a plan to locate the legendary Holy "Grasal" (a.k.a. "Grail") and make it an offering from Barbarossa to the even more legendary Prester John, the fabulously wealthy Christian King of the Orient whose "sovereignty extended over the Three Indias . . . reach . . . [ing] the most remote deserts, as far as the tower of Babel." None of this is nearly as much fun as it sounds, particularly since action is kept to a minimum while Eco permits his characters to engage in lengthy philosophical conversations-the least defensible being Baudolinos Platonic dissection of the phenomenon of love with the beautiful half-woman, half-unicorn (Hypatia) who steals his heart. The wily cupiditous monk Zosimos, whose "necromancy" complicates our heros efforts, has a few good moments, and there are such incidental pleasures as the glimpse of Paradise reported by Baudolinos dying father Gagliaudo ("Its just like our stable, only all cleaned up"). A little learning, reputedly a dangerous thing, can be lethal when allowed to overpower a story as relentlessly as it does in Baudolino. (Kirkus Reviews) Review Text A whirlwind of an adventure- and has everything - myths, marvels, monsters, murders, mysteries Review Quote A whirlwind of an adventure- and has everything - myths, marvels, monsters, murders, mysteries Promotional "Headline" An extraordinary, epic, brilliantly-imagined new novel from a world-class writer. Details ISBN0099422395 Author Umberto Eco Year 2003 ISBN-10 0099422395 ISBN-13 9780099422396 Format Paperback Imprint Vintage Place of Publication London Country of Publication United Kingdom DEWEY 853.914 Media Book Short Title BAUDOLINO Language English Residence Milan, IT Affiliation University of Bologna I.B. Tauris & Co. I.B. Tauris & Co. I.B. Tauris Translator William Weaver Pages 528 Publisher Vintage Publishing Translated from Italian UK Release Date 2003-10-02 Publication Date 2003-10-02 AU Release Date 2003-10-02 NZ Release Date 2003-10-02 Illustrator Nadia Fisher Birth 1969 Position Editor Qualifications Psy.D. Alternative 9781473512221 Audience General We've got this At The Nile, if you're looking for it, we've got it. With fast shipping, low prices, friendly service and well over a million items - you're bound to find what you want, at a price you'll love! TheNile_Item_ID:1123853;

Price: 30.49 AUD

Location: Melbourne

End Time: 2025-01-31T03:17:41.000Z

Shipping Cost: 0 AUD