Looking for books about conspiracies. Not non-fiction, but more of Hilary Mantel’s “Cromwell Trilogy,” or the intricate plots that occasionally show up in Thomas Pynchon’s writing. I also really enjoyed Conrad’s “The Secret Agent” along the same lines.

*The Prague Cemetery* by Umberto Eco

Since some people didn’t read it properly and accused Eco of antisemitism, I am including this summary from the Jewish Book Council: Umber­to Eco’s fas­ci­nat­ing and dis­turb­ing new nov­el is a fic­tion­al account of how the noto­ri­ous sham “The Pro­to­cols of the Elders of Zion” was invent­ed from nov­els and forg­eries to become the work that con­tributed so heav­i­ly to Hitler’s anti-Semi­tism. In Simone Simoni­ni, the only fic­tion­al char­ac­ter in the nov­el, Eco has cre­at­ed one of the most despi­ca­ble char­ac­ters in mod­ern lit­er­a­ture. He describes how this spy, forg­er, glut­ton, and vir­u­lent anti-Semi­te man­u­fac­tured an eye-wit­ness account of a meet­ing of rab­bis from through­out Europe who come togeth­er in a ceme­tery in Prague to plot the destruc­tion of Chris­t­ian civ­i­liza­tion and become the rulers of the West­ern world.”

I think the problem for a lot of people is that the book is told from Simonini’s perspective and he is a loathsome antisemite. That said, it’s a fascinating book and Simonini is one of its few fictional characters.