Umberto Eco in conversation with Paul Holdengräber

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This conversation took place at Kensington Town Hall on 19th November 2011.

Speakers:

UMBERTO ECO: Italian semiotician, philosopher, literary critic and novelist

PAUL HOLDENGRÄBER: Director of LIVE from the New York Public Library where he has interviewed and hosted President Clinton, Norman Mailer, Spike Lee and Jay-Z

Event info:

CONSPIRACY, PARANOIA & THE NOVEL

A Conversation with Umberto Eco.

Writing fiction about the real
Exploring the persistence of conspiracies
Adapting "The Name of the Rose" for the internet generation
Grasping the infinity of lists
Exploring the future of books
Losing yourself in a 50,000-volume library

These are some of the topics Umberto Eco will be discussing with Paul Holdengräber, Director of LIVE at the New York Public Library.

Their wide-ranging conversation will in part focus on Eco's latest work of fiction, The Prague Cemetery. The book is an historical pseudo-reconstruction set in a 19th-century Europe teeming with secret service forgeries, Jesuit plots, murders and conspiracies, and covering everything from the unification of Italy, the Paris Commune, the Dreyfus Affair to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. It has been criticised by both the Vatican-backed newspaper the Osservatore Romano and the Chief Rabbi of Rome.