Review

This is not the book to smooth over Umberto Eco's reputation. The Italian columnist of the left-oriented daily La Repubblica delivers here a compilation of articles and conference scripts written between 2000 and 2005, that is the period of Berlusconi's domination on Italian media and society as large. Explictly in opposition with Berlusconism, Eco's articles and intervention reach a certain degree of interest for those who looked at Italy from outside, judging and sentencing what was happening at that time. Whether you will agree or not with Eco's position the light and the tone of his analysis certainly valuable for understanding Italy under Berlusconi.

Published in Italian by Bompiani, Milan

As philosopher, Eco pursues a pattern of writing which now and then suffers historical and cultural detours obscuring his point, but is balanced by his irnoy and energetic claims which will keep one's attention and necessarily provoke a reaction of agreement or contempt. Controversial but well-known for his political involvment, Eco points out bitterly but fairly the lacks and inertias of the Italian opposition to Berlusconi, feeding the internal debate of the left over its way back in charge.

Published in French by Grasset, Paris

As he ventures from time to time to analyse international issues such as the war in Iraq, his vivid style finds itself lonely in an obvious deficit of accuracy of judgments, treading on the ground of impulses rather than analysis. It besides alters the overall structures of the present work and dilutes its successful critics on the regime and its manners. The book surprisingly ends up on a deeply moving tone through a metaphorical text at the evidence highly personnal about death and the way one can accpet its fatality.

Despite the talent displayed in analysing and criticizing the undercurrents of Berlusconism, those who expect from A passo di gambero to be a political essay might feel lost in this kaleidoscopic compilation of documents, which finally makes Eco's singularity.

Bodum