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?

"Choreographed by a truth that is itself so strange a novelist need hardly expand on it to produce a wondrous tale. . . . Eco is to be applauded for bringing this stranger-than-fiction truth vividly to life." --The New York Times