Publisher's Synopsis
"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. 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