Al Adad Sefr | Umberto Eco

This book tells the story of a newspaper that will never see the light of day, because its publisher wanted it from the beginning to be a tool of blackmail rather than a tool of media. Under the pretext of searching for the truth, five individuals who all had different and failed previous experiences were invited to form an editorial board, the apparent task of which is to reveal the truth to public opinion and to the reader. The starting point is the year 1992, and through the periodic meetings of the members of the editorial board, their discussions and work programs to prepare the zero issue of the newspaper, the hidden secrets of journalistic work and its dubious methods aimed at influencing public opinion and directing it to what serves the interests of some parties are revealed. This is well known and is not new. What draws our attention in this new novel by Eiko is the intertwining of the present with the past, So, the book tells us the history of Italy in the last decades of the last century, coloring it with a false Mussolini ghost who returns to power again, but suddenly dies and the coup against the state fails. A conspiracy may have arisen in the imagination of "Bergadocchio," the editor who is more obsessed than others with the idea of ​​a global conspiracy involving political parties, the Vatican, the CIA, Freemasonry, and some financial circles. Everyone thought it was all from the inventions of Bergadocchio's sick mind, but when he was found murdered, everything became true. Are we also, every day, victims of hands that work in secret through newspapers and television channels and move us like puppets? And if our desire to know the truth turns into a fear of discovering the truth. An interesting novel that Eco left us before his departure on February 19, 2016, to make us feel the need not to accept what is being told to us and to always refer to reason in all cases.