Three editors at a vanity publishing house in Milan—Belbo, Casaubon, and Diotallevi—invent a grand historical conspiracy to amuse themselves. They feed fragments of occult lore and Templar history into a computer named Abulafia to create "The Plan," a fictional narrative connecting the Rosicrucians, the Holy Grail, and telluric currents. Their satirical game backfires when secret societies take the hoax seriously. These occultists believe the editors possess the lost map to a source of ultimate worldly power hidden beneath the pendulum in Paris.
Readers interested in the intersection of semiotics, medieval history, and the psychology of belief will find this intellectual puzzle rewarding. It attracts people who enjoy decoding complex literary references and deconstructing how conspiracy theories function through the manipulation of symbols. The reader finishes the book with a cynical understanding of how human imagination can manufacture connections between unrelated facts until fiction becomes a dangerous, self-fulfilling reality. This is a study of how language shapes perception.
Deep, open-ended and thought-provoking; a demanding read.
Best for readers like The Deep Diver. Which reader are you?
- Published
- 1988
- Language
- EN
