Баудолино

The Third Crusade through the eyes of Umberto Eco.

An adventure novel about knights, the story of an impossible murder, a fantastic tale of strange creatures – “Baudolino” is an extraordinary book, the fruit of Umberto Eco's erudition and his subtle humor.

New edition from 2020!

Fictions that become history... Somewhere in southern Piedmont, where years later the city of Alessandria will rise, Baudolino, a small peasant boy gifted with a rich imagination and a lying tongue, impresses Frederick Barbarossa so much that he adopts him. Baudolino tells fabrications, but miraculously everything he utters becomes History. In this way, among other things, he composes a false letter supposedly from Father John, the legendary ruler of a Christian kingdom in the distant East, which for centuries afterwards would ignite the imagination of many Western travelers. Prompted by Baudolino's fictions, Frederick leads the Third Crusade for the liberation of the Holy Sepulchre, but his actual aim is to reach the kingdom of Prester John.

Umberto Eco was born in Alessandria, Northern Italy, in 1932. Professor of semiotics and president of the Higher School of Human Sciences at the University of Bologna. In 1980 he made his fiction debut with the novel “The Name of the Rose”, followed by “Foucault's Pendulum”, “The Island of the Day Before”, and now Baudolino. Each of them is a world bestseller.