Foucault's Pendulum

From Strand Bookstore

Colonel Ardenti starts it all: He tells three editors that he has discovered a coded message about a centuries-old Knights Templar plan to tap a mystic source of power greater than atomic energy. The editors, bored with rewriting crackpot manuscript on the occult and amused by his claims, decide to conjure a Plan of their own. Into their computer they feed manuscript pages on Satanic initiation rites, Rosicrucianism, the measurements ofthe Great Pyramid - & out comes a map indicating a point from which all the powers of the earth can be controlled, a point located at Foucault's Pendulum in Paris. A joke? First the colonel disappears, then others...

From the Publisher

Three editors, inspired by an extraordinary fable about a mystic source of power greater than atomic energy, begin feeding esoteric bits of knowledge into a sophisticated computer, creating an incredible game that begins taking over. Reprint.

Review

Publishers Weekly
"Dense, packed with meaning, often startlingly provocative, the novel is a mixture of metaphysical meditation, detective story, computer handbook, introduction to physics and philosophy, historical survey, mathematical puzzle, compendium of religious and cultural mythology, guide to the Torah..., reference manual to the occult, the hermetic mysteries, the Rosicrucians, the Jesuits, the Freemasons--ad infinitum."

Review

Anthony Burgess - New York Times Book Review
"...Great are the rewards for those who actually manage to read it...It is a truly formidable gathering of information delivered playfully by a master manipulating his own invention."

More about the book

Umberto Eco followed up the enormous success of his semiotic murder-mystery, THE NAME OF THE ROSE, with an equally erudite and intellectually spellbinding novel, the pseudo-thriller FOUCAULT'S PENDULUM. In jest, two editors in Milan and an expert on the Knights Templar invent an elaborate plan linking dozens of occult events with a secret scheme by the Templars to take over the world. The key to their world domination rests at Foucault's Pendulum in Paris. However, various nefarious organizations catch wind of the "plan," and soon what began as an intellectual prank becomes deadly serious.