Baudolino by Umberto Eco

Baudolino by Umberto Eco

It is April 1204, and Constantinople is being sacked and burned
by, one Baudolino saves a historian and high court official from certain death and proceeds to tell his own magical story.
Born a simple peasant in Northern Italy, Baudolino has two major gifts-a
talent for learning languages and a skill in telling lies. When he charms Emperor Frederick Barbarossa with his wit, the commander adopts Baudolino and sends him to the university in Paris, where he makes a number of fearless, adventurous friends.
Spurred on by myths and their own reveries, this merry band sets out in search
of Prester John, a legendary priest-king said to rule over a vast kingdom in the East-a phantasmagorical land of strange creatures with eyes on their shoulders and mouths on their stomachs, of eunuchs, unicorns, and lovely maidens.
War and peace, belief and skepticism, false dreams and true, the pleasures of storytelling and the mysteries of love: Eco handles these themes with an exhilarating blend of profundity and lightness. . . . This is a novel that keeps getting better. -The Christian Science Monitor

UMBERTO ECO is a professor of semiotics at the University of Bologna and the bestselling author of numerous novels and essays. He lives in Italy.