The Prague Cemetery

By: Umberto Eco

Narrated by: Jean Brassard

Nineteenth-century Europe—from Turin to Prague to Paris—abounds with the ghastly and the mysterious. 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. Conspiracies rule history. 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 the world’s most infamous document?

Umberto Eco takes his readers on a remarkable journey through the underbelly of world-shattering events. Here is Eco at his most exciting, a book immediately hailed as a masterpiece.

Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

Clever and Inventive

There are many historical trends and events woven into this novel. Is it just a darkly humorous spoof - or is truth being revealed under the guise of fiction?

Excellent Narrator

I was worried I wouldn’t be able to follow all the french but I was sucked in soon enough. An accomplishment to keep you zoomed in on the banal inner workings of such a despicable dude. Breezy narration on some of our darkest cultural DNA, with some detailed recipes taped on.

Paranoid historical fiction of Antisemitism

It’s a pulpy schizophrenic spy novel but really educational. Did you know Martin Luther’s antisemitism inspired Hitler? Did you know Dostoyevsky was also an antisemite? And so on. But it’s sad mankind is so evil and paranoid.

Love Eco. Hate the lazy reader

Why are readers so unskilled nowadays? Can’t they look up words they don’t know? This reader is good at French words but mangles so many English ones. It is ignorant and off-putting.

Narrator irritating and characters unsympathetic

They tried to cast someone who spoke French fluently but failed to realize how irritating his phlemy delivery would be. This book is not like Name of the Rose. While the author tried to write a dispicable narrator who has serious mental issues, we don't care about him which is the paramount rule in writing. If I can't identify with something the main character is experiencing I won't put up with the endless forgeries he is describing, even if the history is interesting. Better stick your proven formula in Name of the Rose.