Baudolino

In April 1204, the Fourth Crusade knights are burning and pillaging Constantinople, the magnificent capital of the Byzantine Empire. Amidst the chaos and bloodshed, a man named Baudolino tells his own fanciful tale after saving a historian and high court official from impending death at the hands of the crusading troops.

Baudolino, a straightforward peasant from northern Italy by birth, with two special talents: the ability to learn languages and the ability to fabricate falsehoods. He encounters a foreign commander in the woods while he is still a youngster, and he charms him with his sharp intellect and quick wit. Baudolino is taken in by the commander, who turns out to be Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, and sent to the university in Paris, where he befriends many bold and daring people.

Motivated by fables and their own dreams, this joyful group embarks on a quest to find Prester John, a fabled priest-king rumored to govern an immense realm in the East—a fantastical realm inhabited by odd beings possessing eyes on their shoulders and mouths on their stomachs, as well as gorgeous maidens and eunuchs.

This is Eco the storyteller at his most brilliant, full of fantastic tricks, scintillating digressions, amazing emotion, and vicarious insights on our postmodern world.