1945, Lake Como. Mussolini and his mistress are captured and shot by local partisans. The precise circumstances of Il Duce's death remain shrouded in controversy.
1992, Milan. Colonna, a depressed hack writer, is offered a fee he can't refuse to ghost-write a memoir. His subject: a fledgling newspaper, which happens to be financed by a powerful media magnate. As Colonna gets to know the team, he learns the paranoid theories of the Editor, who is convinced that Mussolini's corpse was a body-double and part of a wider Fascist plot. It's the scoop the paper desperately needs. The evidence? He's working on it.
Colonna is sceptical. But when a body is found, stabbed to death in a back alley, and the paper is shut down, even he is jolted out of his complacency.
Fuelled by media hoaxes, Mafiosi, love, gossip and murder, Numero Zero reverberates with the clash of forces that have shaped Italy since World War II. This gripping novel from the author of The Name of the Rose is told with all the power of a master storyteller.

Klappentext From the best-selling author of The Name of the Rose and The Prague Cemetery, a novel about the murky world of media politics, conspiracy, and murder.

New York Times Paperback Row
One of Vulture's "7 Books You Need to Read this November"
Included on the Los Angeles Times's "Holiday Books Roundup"
One of Bloomberg Business's "Eight Books for Your Holiday Reading"
One of The Millions "Most Anticipated" from the Second Half of 2015
One of the Sun Herald's "Ten noteworthy fiction and nonfiction titles on the way"
December 2015 Indie Next Pick

“Witty and wry...slim in pages but plump in satire about modern Italy...it’s hard not to be charmed by the zest of the author.”—Tom Rachman, New York Times Book Review

"Frequently imitated for his amalgamation of intellect, conspiracism, and historical suspense, the author of In the Name of the Rose takes a more contemporary and satirical turn. In 1992, as Italy works to cleanse itself of corruption, a hack journalist is hired to ghostwrite a memoir about a never-to-be-published gossip rag in order to cover up the real rationale for its fakery. Eco’s warped parable is rooted in a very specific time and place, but readers of Elena Ferrante or Rachel Kushner will likely catch the barbs in his clever absurdities."—Vulture (New York), "7 Books You Need to Read this November"

"Colonna, the struggling ghostwriter at the heart of this story, is transfixed by a juicy scoop: that Mussolini was not killed by partisans in 1945, as most believe, but instead survived in hiding. This sly satire, borrowing from outrageous real-life Italian politics, features a larger-than-life leader, conspiracy theories and an almost-corrupt press."—New York Times, Paperback Row

"Numero Zero [is]...a smart puzzle and a delight."—Kirkus Reviews, starred

"Eco combines his delight in suspense with astute political satire in this brainy, funny, neatly lacerating thriller…. Eco’s caustically clever, darkly hilarious, dagger-quick tale of lies, crimes, and collusions condemns the shameless corruption and greed undermining journalism and governments everywhere. A satisfyingly scathing indictment brightened by resolute love." --Booklist

Autorentext
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.RICHARD DIXON lives and works in Italy. His translations include works by Umberto Eco, Roberto Calasso, and Giacomo Leopardi. His translation of The Prague Cemetery* by Umberto Eco was short-listed for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize in 2012.

Zusammenfassung
From the best-selling author of The Name of the Rose and The Prague Cemetery, a novel about the murky world of media politics, conspiracy, and murder

A newspaper committed to blackmail and mud slinging, rather than reporting the news.
 
A paranoid editor, walking through the streets of Milan, reconstructing fifty years of history against the backdrop of a plot involving the cadaver of Mussolini's double.
 
The murder of Pope John Paul I, the CIA, red terrorists handled by secret services, twenty years of bloodshed, and events that seem outlandish until the BBC proves them true.
 
A fragile love story between two born losers, a failed ghost writer, and a vulnerable girl, who specializes in celebrity gossip yet cries over the second movement of Beethoven’s Seventh. And then a dead body that suddenly appears in a back alley in Milan. 
 
Set in 1992 and foreshadowing the mysteries and follies of the following twenty years, Numero Zero is a scintillating take on our times from the best-selling author of The Name of the Rose and Foucault's Pendulum.