The Mysterious Flame Of Queen Loana (Paperback)
Yambo, a sixtyish rare-book dealer who lives in Milan, has suffered a loss of memory — he can remember the plot of every book he has ever read, every line of poetry, but he no longer knows his own name, doesn't recognize his wife or his daughters, and remembers nothing about his parents or his childhood. In an effort to retrieve his past, he withdraws to the family home somewhere in the hills between Milan and Turin.
There, in the sprawling attic, he searches through boxes of old newspapers, comics, records, photo albums, and adolescent diaries. And so Yambo relives the story of his generation: Mussolini, Catholic education and guilt, Josephine Baker, Flash Gordon, Fred Astaire. His memories run wild, and the life racing before his eyes takes the form of a graphic novel. Yambo struggles through the frames to capture one simple, innocent image: that of his first love.
A fascinating, abundant novel — wide-ranging, nostalgic, funny, full of heart — from the incomparable Eco.
Umberto Eco (1932–2016) was the author of numerous essay collections and seven novels, including The Name of the Rose,The Prague Cemetery, and Inventing the Enemy. He received Italy’s highest literary award, the Premio Strega; was named a Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur by the French government; and was an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
PRAISE FOR BAUDOLINO
"A richly variegated haul of medieval treasures . . . Compulsively readable."-THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW
PRAISE FOR THE NAME OF THE ROSE
"The kind of novel that changes our mind, replaces our reality with its own."-LOS ANGELES TIMES
"Like the labyrinthine library at its heart, this brilliant novel has many cunning passages and secret chambers . . . Fascinating . . . Ingenious . . . Dazzling."-NEWSWEEK
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