Baudolino

To be sure, Baudolino is as fine an adventure from a different time and place as can be found. Stacked up to Umberto Eco's other works of fiction Baudolino is the most fanciful of the group. In Baudolino Eco Lends beauty to medieval times, and tells the most truth through a most prolific liar.

I've recently started reading Umberto Eco's Baudolino, a rambunctious tale of a thirteenth century opportunist. "The world condemns liars who do nothing but lie, even about the most trivial things, and it rewards poets, who lie only about the greatest things." Although I'm only 120 pages into this 500 page novel, I'm engrossed by the weaving plots and rich characters. Baudolino is an Italian peasant with a gift for languages and a bald-faced liar who is adopted by an emperor as a boy and falls in love with the emperor's young bride as a teenager. He studies at the University of Paris in its first years, and befriends a wannabe poet and a moorish scholar, and the three of them are off now on worldly quests, befuddled by alcohol and "green honey". The thirteenth century was an influential time for so many elements of our modern society, seeing the usurpation of the church in Europe by the birth of the university, science, nationalism and capitalism, for all the good and bad that it all heralded. This book thus far does a great job of chronicling this from the perspective of someone entrenched in the middle of it all. It's great fun to compare our modern knowledge with that of a medieval persona. I'll let you know what I think when I'm done with it, but so far, I'd highly recommend Umberto Eco's Baudolino.

This is one of the great shaggy dog stories of all time. But, as the author is Umberto Eco, it means that a whole lot of other things are going on as well. Baudolino is a barely literate Northern Italian peasant who somehow a close friend of Frederick I Barbarossa, the 12th Century Holy Roman Emperor. He feels grateful to his emperor, and strives to take his leadership to the next level, by an embassy to the lost Christian realm of Prester John. As a suitable gift to the mythical ruler, Baudolino takes an old drinking cup of his father's and calls it the Holy Grail. Frederick goes along with the whole scheme -- anything to escape those endless wars with the petty Northern Italian states -- and sets out to the East. History states that Frederick drowned while crossing a river enroute to the Third Crusade. Eco invents a classical locked-room mystery to account for the emperor's death, and late in the book provides a neat answer that also satisfies the historians.The whole story is told to a Byzantine official whom Baudolino saves. While they escape the ravages of the Fourth Crusade with its sacking of Constantinople, Baudolino spins an incredible tale encompassing much of the medieval bestiary and then some. On one hand, he is the most incredible liar who never lived: His kingdom of Prester John is located in one of those eternally disgruntled Muslim states of Central Asia in which, if there were ever any unicorns, they were long served as shish-kebabs.There is a story about Freud and a mythical patient who spins out a long story for the great psychologist. "That's very interesting," said Freud. When the patient admits that the whole story was bogus, the response was, "That's even more interesting!" Baudolino IS the Middle Ages personified, except for the minor detail that he is not much of a believer in this age of faith. Where the old maps say, "there be dragons here," Baudolino shows you the dragons. Perhaps, a more true statement is that Baudolino is the Medieval Imagination personified. Bogus or not, he created worlds within worlds that are endlessly enthralling. Be prepared for a wild ride in what must be one of the best books written in the last ten years.

Renaissance man Umberto Eco continues to enthrall with a return to the era he so masterfully painted in "The Name Of The Rose." An intrepid, nonparallel story teller he again visits the Middle Ages with Baudolino, a marvelous blend of history and imagination. It is April 1204 and a northern Italian peasant, Baudolino, is in Constantinople, the resplendent capital of the Byzantine Empire. The city staggers under the relentless onslaught of the knights of the Fourth Crusade who pillage and burn. Oblivious to his own safety Baudolino rescues an important personage, a historian from sure death at the hands of the marauding warriors. This is the person to whom Baudolino recounts his life story - a colorful narrative laced with fantasy and adventure. Although of humble birth, we learn that Baudolino is rich in two areas: the art of inspired prevarication and an aptitude for learning languages. When still a youngster he was adopted by Emperor Frederick Barbarossa who later sent the boy to the university in Paris. Affable and quick, Baudolino soon made friends in France with those who shared his somewhat reckless taste for adventure. Together a group of them journey to the east and embark upon a search for a mythical priest-king, Prester John. It is believed that Prester John's domain is a fabled land inhabited by eunuchs, unicorns, beautiful maidens, and bizarre beings with misplaced orifices. As is his wont the unsurpassed Eco weaves his story with ruminations of weighty matters such as theology, politics, government, and history. He does this with fluid prose and provocative thoughts that inevitably draw readers into the author's unique land of enchantment, a magical place that one is reluctant to leave. - Gail Cooke

I have somewhat mixed feelings about this book, I liked wery much the first half, but the second half was somewhat dissapointing. Although the story is medieval, its style, aims are completely different from The name of the rose, its rather a "Gesta", not a crime story. What I really enjoyed in this book is Eco's ability to show the medieval way of thinking, in an extraordinarily interesting, complicated (and somewhat shameful) period of European history. Howewer in the second half of the book the connection with reality is more and more lost, some kind of solution is lacking, and I found the crime story that is also present on the sidelines somehow unnecessary. (This review is based on the Polish edition)