Umberto Eco once blamed Silvio Berlusconi’s excesses on public apathy (Berlusconi himself was “just getting on with his job”). Set in Milan in 1992 – pre-Berlo – his new novel pursues this idea with jaunty seriousness. It’s narrated by Colonna, a failed literary man who sells out for a paycheck when he takes a job at a new newspaper bankrolled by an arriviste tycoon keen to manipulate the populace for reasons as yet unclear. When the story opens, the paper has folded without printing a single issue, and Colonna fears for his life after the murder of a fellow hack who nursed a far-reaching conspiracy theory involving Mussolini, the Red Brigades and the CIA. The thriller element kickstarts a media satire that always verges on farce even as you feel that Eco, a child of the 1930s, can never be too light-hearted about his central theme of quietism.
Numero Zero is published by Harvill Secker (£16.99). Click here to order it for £12.99
