Baudolino, February 2009, 7/10.
Written by Umberto Eco, published by Bompiani.
This novel brilliantly mixes the picaresque genre with the epic poems typical of th Middle Ages. We follow Baudolino, born to peasants in Northern Italy at the beginning of the 12th Century, as he makes the history of this time. He studies at the newly created university in Paris, fights next to Frederick I Barbarossa for the conquest of Italy, travels to Jerusalem with the crusaders, and in the meanwhile we discover it is he who came up with the idea of the Grail, wrote some of the medieval poems that have not been attibuted, spread several fake reliquiae, and so on. Erudite historical references and profound philosophical notions are bound toghether playfully with a colloquial, at times dialectal, language. Despite all this praise, there is something affected in the book that renders it less captivating.
