The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana by Umberto Eco (2005)
The plot centres on a middle-aged Italian man who loses all memory of his past and returns to his old family home to try to recover his lost childhood and youth. A shocking discovery causes him to suddenly remember everything about his life in great detail except the face of his first true love. (The under-dressed lady on the front cover is not his lost love but American dancer Josephine Baker who scandalised Europe in the 1920's)
The book is heavily illustrated with popular cultural artifacts (book jackets, comic strips, record covers and other printed ephemera) from the inter-War years of Fascist Italy – the time of the man’s childhood and youth.
Umberto Eco is probably best known for writing the medieval murder mystery ‘The Name of the Rose’. He was a professor at Bologna University, a critic, a philosopher and all round egg-head who enjoyed ‘low culture’ as well as the study of symbolism. He died at the age of 84 in February 2016.
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