Foucault's Pendulum

<p>"An encyclopedic detective story . . . An intellectual triumph."--Anthony Burgess</p> <p>"Foucault's Pendulum 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."--Chicago Tribune</p> <p>"Rich and witty."--Newsweek</p> <p>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.</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>