In 1939, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was the most widely circulated document in the world following the bible. It was a fraudulent text that unveiled a Jewish conspiracy for world domination, and it’s little wonder that Umberto Eco couldn’t resist writing its genesis – for this is his signature dish. Complex conspiracies and secret codes abound with a dizzying display of pyrotechnics. Bomb techniques and gastronomy blend with revolution and bloodshed as we visit Freud, Dumas, Garibaldi and Drumont. In fact the only fictitious character here is our protagonist, Simone Simonini.

Suspecting he suffers from a split personality, Simonini locks himself in his room and writes a diary on the advice of Freud’s ‘self-hypnosis’. This is Paris, 1897. From here we witness his isolated, anti-Semitic upbringing that drives him into the world of Jesuit plots and Masonic sects, grooming him for the life of an expert forger. But he quickly becomes adept as a cunning spy, playing all sides as a wily double-crosser with a penchant for disguise. But this is where it gets tricky.

After long bouts of writing Simonini wakes feverish and without memory, but sees that someone else – a priest named Abbe Dalla Piccola – has continued his story and completed the parts he cannot remember. These are often short interludes, but then summarised by a further voice called the Narrator ‘so as to not bore the Reader’. While this interplay is an obvious nod to Eco’s theoretical concerns with narrative authenticity, it becomes frustratingly tiresome and repetitive, detracting from the parts brimming with tension and suspense.

The Prague Protocols have popped up before in Eco’s writing, and this is an impressive historical whodunit of the greatest hoax that bore modern anti-Semitism. It’s brilliant and clever as always, but make sure you carry a wiki-index with you.

Luke May is from Readings St Kilda