Foucault's Pendulum

Umberto Eco · 1932–2016 · Italy

Originally Il pendolo di Foucault (Italian) · translated by William Weaver

Why it matters

Three editors invent a grand conspiracy as a game, and are consumed when believers take it for truth. Eco's prescient satire of occultism and the paranoid style, decades before the internet industrialized it.

At a glance

Encyclopedic esoterica and interlocking conspiracies demand sustained scholarly patience.