The Prague Cemetery immediately plunges the reader into a mystery in fin de siècle Paris: who is narrating this story? Soon the reader finds out there are three voices, represented by three different fonts: the forger-spy Simonini, his alter ego Abbé Dalla Piccola (who might or might not be the same person), and the Narrator who sometimes summarizes their diary entries. The story then goes into flashback mode covering Simonini's life with marginal involvement in some important events in nineteenth-century Europe. Being familiar with such history or interest in Freemasons, the Catholic Church, anti-Semitism would help the reader navigate through the story. Although the dust jacket blurb billed it as revealing the unique link between multiple conspiracies, due to its retrospective nature it read like the backstory it was to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a fraudulent document of Jewish plans for world domination. It lacked an element of suspense and the protagonist spouted a lot of anti-Semitic and misogynistic ideas along the way. However, I can see how someone else would be impressed with Umberto Eco's choreography of this fictionalized story and this tale of recycled truth and lies.

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