The Prague Cemetery Summary: Eco’s Conspiracy Thriller
A Forger’s Diary in 1897 Paris
In 1897 Paris, an aging forger named Simone Simonini begins a diary because he cannot explain gaps in his memory. He also finds a priest’s cassock and wig in his room, though he does not know why they are there.
Umberto Eco’s The Prague Cemetery follows Simonini through nineteenth-century Europe as a secret agent, document forger, and observer of political intrigues.
The book mixes historical figures, espionage, anti-Semitic conspiracy, and unreliable memory. It is a historical thriller shaped by diaries, forged evidence, and competing secret services.
Who Is The Prague Cemetery For?
- Readers of historical fiction set in nineteenth-century Europe.
- Readers who enjoy espionage, secret services, and political intrigue.
- Readers interested in conspiracy theories and how they are constructed.
- Readers who prefer unreliable narrators, diaries, and non-linear storytelling.
- Readers drawn to postmodern historical fiction with real figures and events.
TL;DR: A Conspiracy-Fueled Memory Hunt
- Premise: A misanthropic forger tries to reconstruct his past through a diary while working for rival secret services.
- Setting: Nineteenth-century Turin, Sicily, and Paris, with real historical events and figures woven into the plot.
- Central Project: Simonini helps create a forged conspiracy document that becomes a foundation for The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
- Narrative Style: Non-linear diary entries, split identity, and overlapping perspectives.
- Key Themes: Forgery as power, anti-Semitism, conspiracy thinking, memory loss, and hatred as a political tool.
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The Prague Cemetery at a Glance
- Genre & Subgenre: Historical Fiction / Espionage / Postmodern Thriller
- Core Narrative Tropes: Unreliable narrator, split personality, secret history, diary narrative
- Tone & Atmosphere: Satirical, cynical, claustrophobic, and misanthropic
- Primary Conflict: Simonini’s struggle to recover his memory while serving dangerous intelligence agencies
- Pacing Style: Non-linear, dense, with frequent flashbacks and overlapping diary entries
- ISBN: 978-0547844206
- Pages: 464
- Book Structure: 27 chapters plus an introduction and a historical epilogue
- Author Background: Umberto Eco was an Italian semiotician, philosopher, and novelist, also known for The Name of the Rose and Foucault’s Pendulum.
The Prague Cemetery Summary: The Forger Who Wrote History
Spoilers warning: This section describes the plot and ending.
Simone Simonini is born in Turin and raised by his grandfather Giovanni Battista, who teaches him anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. After his grandfather dies, Simonini works for the corrupt notary Rebaudengo and learns professional forgery.
The Piedmontese Secret Service recruits him to infiltrate revolutionary groups. He betrays young Carbonari students to the police and ruins Rebaudengo’s business.
In 1860, Simonini joins Garibaldi’s expedition to Sicily as a spy for Piedmont. He sabotages the steamship Ercole, killing the poet Ippolito Nievo and others to hide financial accounts.
Exiled to Paris, he works for the French Sûreté and the Russian Okhrana. He survives the Siege of Paris and the Commune as a double agent.
His central project becomes a forged conspiracy document. He combines anti-Semitic tropes, popular fiction, and Maurice Joly’s political satire into a story about a secret rabbinical gathering in the Prague Cemetery.
This fabricated report later becomes a foundation for The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. In The Prague Cemetery, Simonini also develops a split personality and acts as Abbé Dalla Piccola.
He created this identity after murdering the real Dalla Piccola in 1869. As the priest, he manages the Léo Taxil anti-Masonic hoax and uses Diana Vaughan to fabricate Satanic Palladism stories.
In March 1897, Simonini as Dalla Piccola attends a black mass. He is sexually molested by Diana, discovers her mother was Jewish, and strangles her. He also murders Abbé Boullan and hides the bodies in his basement sewer.
By April 1897, Simonini realizes that he and Dalla Piccola are the same person. He removes the Dalla Piccola persona and attends Taxil’s public confession that the anti-Masonic campaign was a hoax.
In November 1898, Russian agent Rachkovsky blackmails Simonini over the bodies in the sewer. Simonini gives his final version of the Protocols to Russian agent Golovinsky.
He hopes his work will lead to the extermination of Jewish people. In December 1898, he accepts one last job for Rachkovsky: blowing up the Paris Metro to provide physical proof of the Jewish conspiracy.
The diary ends as Simonini takes cocaine and cognac, prepares a time bomb, and descends into the tunnel “in full regalia.” Umberto Eco leaves the final act at that point.
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The Prague Cemetery Summary by Chapter
Spoilers warning: This section provides a brief summary of each chapter for readers who want to explore what is inside.
The book has 27 chapters, plus an introduction and a historical epilogue.
Chapter 1: A Passerby on That Gray Morning The Narrator introduces place Maubert in 1897 Paris, a district spared from modern renovations and filled with malodorous alleys.
At the end of a blind alley is a junk shop where an elderly man in a dressing gown writes. The Narrator notes that he does not yet know the writer’s identity.
Chapter 2: Who Am I? Simone Simonini begins his diary on March 24, 1897, at the suggestion of a doctor. He expresses hatred for Jews, Germans, and the French while detailing his love for gourmet food. He identifies himself as a sixty-seven-year-old forger with memory gaps and finds a priest’s cassock and wig in his room.
Chapter 3: Chez Magny Simonini recalls eating at the restaurant Magny in the 1880s, where he met doctors and psychiatrists. He recounts conversations about hypnotism and “personality variation” with Doctors Bourru and Burot. He also recalls meeting “Doctor Froïde,” who discussed the “talking cure” and cocaine.
Chapter 4: In My Grandfather’s Day Simonini recounts his childhood in Turin under his anti-Semitic grandfather, Giovanni Battista. The grandfather teaches him about a “universal conspiracy” of Templars and Masons, blaming the “Hebrew sect.” Simonini also describes a humiliating encounter with a Jewish girl in the Turin ghetto and his education by Jesuits.
Chapter 5: Simonino the Carbonaro Abbé Dalla Piccola interrupts the diary to mock Simonini and supply memories Simonini refuses to recall. He describes Simonini working for the notary Rebaudengo and learning to produce new copies of lost genuine documents. Simonini betrays his revolutionary student friends to the police and secures Rebaudengo’s business for himself.
Chapter 6: Serving the Secret Service Simonini resumes the diary and admits his betrayal of the Carbonari. Cavalier Bianco of the Piedmontese Secret Service hires him to find evidence of Jesuit and French plots. He fabricates a document about a secret Jesuit gathering in the Jewish cemetery in Prague, establishing his reputation with officials.
Chapter 7: With the Thousand In 1860, Simonini travels to Sicily on Alexandre Dumas’ yacht to join Garibaldi’s “Thousand.” He spies on the volunteers and notes internal conflicts and “Masonic gold.” He befriends Ippolito Nievo, the expedition’s quartermaster, who keeps careful financial accounts, and sends reports framing Garibaldi as a puppet of the Masons and English.
Chapter 8: The Ercole Simonini plans to destroy Nievo’s account books by blowing up the steamship Ercole. He manipulates a local simpleton, “Bronte,” into lighting the fuse by promising revenge for a massacre. The ship explodes, Simonini murders the explosives expert “Ninuzzo,” and his masters order him to disappear to Paris.
Chapter 9: Paris Arriving in Paris in 1861, Simonini lives in squalor before establishing himself as a forger and police informer. Clément Fabre de Lagrange of the imperial secret service recruits him. He spends his earnings on fine Paris restaurants and tracks people in the city’s passages, seeing exploitable secrets.
Chapter 10: Dalla Piccola Perplexed Dalla Piccola writes that he woke with the taste of absinthe in his mouth, though he has never drunk it. He is confused about his own existence and wonders if Simonini’s diary influences him. A sudden flash brings the name Abbé Boullan and an image of a priest spitting into a woman’s mouth.
Chapter 11: Joly In 1865, Lagrange has Simonini imprisoned in Sainte-Pélagie to spy on the lawyer Maurice Joly. Joly describes his book Dialogue in Hell, which satirizes Napoleon III using a cynical Machiavellian voice. Simonini sees it as a template for a Jewish conspiracy theory and later frames Joly’s friend Lacroix, leading to Lacroix’s death.
Chapter 12: A Night in Prague Simonini meets the Russian agent Brafmann and adapts his Jesuit Prague Cemetery story into a Jewish one. He describes a moonlit gathering of rabbis from the twelve tribes plotting world conquest through gold and the press.
He meets the anti-Semitic writer Gougenot des Mousseaux and the real Abbé Dalla Piccola, concluding that this report is his true mission.
Chapter 13: Dalla Piccola Says He Is Not Dalla Piccola The internal Dalla Piccola looks in a mirror and realizes he looks nothing like the hunchbacked priest Simonini described meeting earlier.
He expresses terror at not knowing who he is. He realizes the diary is the only way to communicate with Simonini.
Chapter 14: Biarritz Simonini travels to Munich to meet Goedsche, a Prussian spy who plagiarizes the Prague Cemetery report for his novel Biarritz.
When the real Abbé Dalla Piccola threatens to expose Simonini as a forger to the Jesuits, Simonini murders him. He drags the body into the Parisian sewers and discovers the subterranean world beneath his shop.
Chapter 15: Dalla Piccola Redivivus The new Dalla Piccola explores the sewer and confirms that a body was left there twenty-five years ago.
He expresses suicidal urges but notes he is already “dead” in Simonini’s history. Simonini resumes writing and recalls a new assignment from Lagrange to spy on the “Satanist” Abbé Boullan.
Chapter 16: Boullan Dalla Piccola provides memories of meeting Boullan and witnessing him perform a “purification” on a possessed woman.
The ritual involves spitting, urination into a chalice, and the use of feces. Boullan mentions a bric-a-brac dealer near place Maubert who sells consecrated hosts, and Dalla Piccola wonders if their lives first crossed there.
Chapter 17: The Days of the Commune Simonini survives the 1870 Franco-Prussian War and the Siege of Paris by acting as a messenger and spy. After Lagrange is executed, Simonini begins working for Hébuterne. He scouts the Paris catacombs, witnesses the brutal repression of the Communards, and notes that prostitutes returning to the streets signal “normalcy.”
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Chapter 18: The Protocols In the late 1870s, Father Bergamaschi blackmails Simonini into expanding the Prague Cemetery document for the Jesuits. Simonini creates separate Protocols tailored for priests, socialists, and Russians. He murders Maurice Joly and frames it as suicide to prevent plagiarism claims, expressing satisfaction as the secret author of global chaos.
Chapter 19: Osman Bey Simonini meets a spindly “Turk” named Osman Bey, who is obsessed with the “final solution” to the Jewish problem. They strike a deal: Osman will provide information on the Alliance Israélite, and Simonini will investigate the Masons. Simonini finds Osman’s descriptions of Jewish “larvae” disgusting yet compelling.
Chapter 20: Russians? In April 1897, both Simonini and Dalla Piccola experience encounters with a “Monsieur Mystère” in their respective apartments.
Dalla Piccola panics and shoots a Russian intruder, dumping the body in the sewer. He discovers three other corpses already there: the original Dalla Piccola, a man in a cassock, and a half-naked woman; both personalities realize the Russians are closing in.
Chapter 21: Taxil Simonini recounts infiltrating the republican “Salon Adam” and meeting the professional hoaxer Léo Taxil.
Disguised as a notary named Maître Fournier, Simonini offers to pay Taxil to “convert” and attack the Masons. He secures funding from both the Jesuits and the Freemasons, who want Taxil to make anti-Masonry look ridiculous, and realizes he can pocket half the money.
Chapter 22: The Devil in the Nineteenth Century Dalla Piccola recounts the details of the Taxil hoax, including the creation of the Satanist priestess “Diana Vaughan.”
He visits Diana in a clinic and witnesses her hysterical attacks. Dalla Piccola takes Diana to a house in Auteuil, where he and Abbé Boullan manage her revelations about Luciferian rites, and the campaign becomes a financial and religious success.
Chapter 23: Twelve Years Well Spent Simonini summarizes his work for the Russian secret service and his association with the anti-Semitic journalist Drumont.
He works with Rachkovsky to frame Jews as the “gravediggers of capitalism.” He also describes forging the bordereau used to frame Captain Dreyfus, noting it was written in Major Esterhazy’s hand, and takes pride in the results.
Chapter 24: A Night Mass Dalla Piccola describes a black mass in March 1897 where Diana Vaughan, naked and masked, serves as a living altar. In a drugged state, Dalla Piccola or Simonini engages in a “deathlike” sexual encounter with her. Afterward he discovers a medallion revealing Diana is Jewish and, in rage and terror, strangles her and shoots Abbé Boullan.
Chapter 25: Sorting Matters Out On April 18, 1897, Simonini realizes that he and Dalla Piccola are the same person. He “kills off” the Dalla Piccola persona by removing his makeup and cleaning out the secret apartment.
He attends Léo Taxil’s public confession on Easter Monday, where Taxil reveals the anti-Masonic campaign was a hoax, and rejoices that Taxil will never find the priest or notary to pay him.
Chapter 26: The Final Solution In November 1898, Rachkovsky blackmails Simonini by revealing he knows about the bodies in the sewer. Simonini hands over his final version of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion to the Russian agent Golovinsky. He expresses nostalgia for “his rabbis” and the hope that his work will lead to the extermination of the Jewish race.
Chapter 27: Diary Cut Short Simonini feels a deep emptiness after completing his life’s work. In December 1898, he agrees to one final job for Rachkovsky: blowing up the Paris Metro to prove the Jewish threat is real.
He takes cocaine and cognac, feels “strength as a lion,” prepares to carry out the bombing “in full regalia,” and the diary ends.
Who’s Who in The Prague Cemetery
| Character | Role |
|---|---|
| Simone Simonini | Protagonist; a forger, secret agent, and gourmet who writes a diary in 1897 Paris. |
| Abbé Dalla Piccola | Simonini’s split personality, created after he murdered a real priest of the same name. |
| Giovanni Battista Simonini | Simonini’s grandfather, who introduces him to anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. |
| Cavalier Bianco | A head of the Piedmontese secret service who first employs Simonini. |
| Ippolito Nievo | A historical poet and Garibaldian officer murdered by Simonini to hide military accounts. |
| Pyotr Rachkovsky | The historical head of the Russian Okhrana in Paris who blackmails Simonini. |
| Léo Taxil | A historical professional hoaxer who collaborates with Simonini on an anti-Masonic campaign. |
| Diana Vaughan | A hysterical patient with a split personality used by Taxil and Simonini to claim she was a Palladian priestess. |
| Maurice Joly | A lawyer whose satirical book against Napoleon III is plagiarized by Simonini for the Protocols. |
| Abbé Boullan | A historical “Satanist” priest and associate of Simonini. |
| Hébuterne | A cold, efficient official of the French secret service. |
| Colonel Dimitri | A Russian agent who purchases the first draft of the Prague Cemetery document. |
| Hacks (Doctor Bataille) | An alcoholic doctor who helps Taxil write The Devil in the Nineteenth Century. |
The Big Ideas Behind the Forgeries
| Theme | How the Book Presents It |
|---|---|
| The Power of Forgery | Forged documents provide “proof” for beliefs people already hold, and Simonini’s forgeries influence major political events. |
| Anti-Semitism | Simonini inherits obsessive anti-Jewish hatred from his grandfather and turns it into a political weapon. |
| The Construction of Conspiracies | Jesuits, Masons, Jews, and revolutionaries are all cast as universal enemies using recycled literary tropes. |
| Memory and Identity Loss | Simonini’s split personality and memory gaps force him to reconstruct his life through diary entries and “talking cures.” |
| The Seduction of Hate | Hatred is described as a primary human passion that provides national identity and personal purpose. |
| Gastronomy as Vice | Simonini’s only consistent pleasure appears in obsessive, sensual descriptions of decadent meals. |
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Memorable Quotes from The Prague Cemetery
“Whom do I hate? I could say the Jews, but the fact that I am yielding so compliantly to the suggestions of that Austrian (or German) doctor suggests I have nothing against the damned Jews.”
“People are never so completely and enthusiastically evil as when they act out of religious conviction.”
“The Italian is an untrustworthy, lying, contemptible traitor, finds himself more at ease with a dagger than a sword, better with poison than medicine, a slippery bargainer, consistent only in changing sides with the wind.”
“The power of art . . . to be rewarded by a visit to the Café Anglais.”
“People believe only what they already know, and this is the beauty of the Universal Form of Conspiracy.”
“If you want to expose the Jews, then talk about the Jews, not the Irish, the Neapolitan monarchy, Piedmontese generals, Polish patriots and Russian nihilists. Too many irons in the fire. How can anyone be so chaotic?”
“Hatred is the true primordial passion. It is love that’s abnormal. That is why Christ was killed: he spoke against nature.”
“I confess, gentlemen, that I have committed infanticide. Palladism is now dead — its father has murdered it.”
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