Foucault's Pendulum

<p><strong>An encyclopedic detective story . . . An intellectual triumph.--Anthony Burgess</strong></p><p><strong><em>Foucault's</em> <em>Pendulum</em> is Eco's magical mystery tour of the Western mind. . . . With this book Eco puts himself in the grand and acerbic tradition of Petronius Rabelais Swift and Voltaire.--<em>Chicago Tribune</em></strong></p><p><strong>Rich and witty.--<em>Newsweek</em></strong></p><p><strong>Infused with history and crackling suspense Umberto Eco's celebrated international bestseller--a cerebral classic prescient of our own times about a literary joke that goes terribly awry unexpectedly plunging its creators into mortal danger.</strong></p><p>A man named Colonel Ardenti tells three cynical book 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 from tooling with manuscripts on the occult and inspired by the colonel's outlandish claims devise a literary prank for their own amusement. Using a computer into which they enter bits of information on the Knights Templar Satanic initiation rites Rosicrucianism the measurements of the Great Pyramid and supernatural and occult phenomenon they create 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.</p><p>The editors are convinced they've devised the ultimate literary joke a game to consume conspiracy theorists mystical buffs and everyone else fool enough to play.</p><p>But their joke becomes all too terrifyingly real when people begin to disappear mysteriously beginning with the Colonel. . . .</p>