> Skip to content
Play sample
  • Published: 1 August 2016
  • ISBN: 9781784701826
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 272
  • RRP: $27.99

Numero Zero




The gripping new conspiracy thriller by the internationally bestselling author of The Name of the Rose

The gripping new conspiracy thriller by the bestselling author of The Name of the Rose

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 confusion and controversy.

1992, Milan. Colonna takes a job at a fledgling newspaper financed by a powerful media magnate. There he learns the paranoid theories of Braggadocio, who is convinced that Mussolini’s corpse was a body-double and part of a wider Fascist plot.

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 conspiracy theories, Mafiosi, love, corruption and murder, Numero Zero reverberates with the clash of forces that have shaped Italy since the Second World War. This gripping novel from the author of The Name of the Rose is told with all the power of a master storyteller.

  • Published: 1 August 2016
  • ISBN: 9781784701826
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 272
  • RRP: $27.99

About the author

Umberto Eco

Umberto Eco (1932–2016) wrote fiction, literary criticism and philosophy. His first novel, The Name of the Rose, was a major international bestseller. His other works include Foucault's Pendulum, The Island of the Day Before, Baudolino, The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana, The Prague Cemetery and Numero Zero along with many brilliant collections of essays.

Also by Umberto Eco

See all

Praise for Numero Zero

Practically a manual on today’s media

Roberto Saviano, L'Espresso

A conte philosophique on our tendency to see conspiracies everywhere… in the end, a damning confirmation of the long moral and civic decline of Italy over the past fifty years

Il Sole 24 Ore

Eco’s novel on post-War Italy inevitably turns into a detective story. But it's one without a culprit: like all the great detective stories of [Italy’s] recent history...[which] Eco revisits at high speed in this fast-paced, frequently entertaining novel

La Stampa

A smart, modern mystery

Justine Carbery, Independent

Cynical but heartfelt, utterly flippant yet deadly serious

Mark Sanderson, The Times

A triumph

Scotland on Sunday

A kaleidoscopic, playful, yet deadly serious satire

Catholic Herald

Combines farce and conspiracy thriller while retaining the author’s familiar sense of detachment

Anthony Cummins, Guardian

Brims with exuberant inventiveness

Terry Eagleton, Times Literary Supplement

A novel for our times

Irish News