Book Review “... corruption rife, mafiosi officially in parliament, tax dodgers in government, and the only ones to end up in prison are Albanian chicken thieves. Decent people will carry on voting for the hoodlums because they won’t believe the BBC, or they don’t watch such programmes because they’re glued to something more trashy...” The bizarre has become the normal. That’s what Umberto Eco’s latest novel, Numero Zero , from which the above quote is taken, seems to imply. It is a slim novel (190 pages) with a scanty plot . Commendatore Vimercate is an entrepreneur who “controls a dozen or so hotels on the Adriatic coast, owns a large number of homes for pensioners and the infirm, has various shady dealings around which there’s much speculation, and controls a number of local TV channels that start at eleven at night and broadcast nothing but auctions, telesales and a few risqué shows...” He now wants to start a newspaper, or pretend to do so, because he wants to e
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