This is done with Ecovian (if I can say that) cheerfulness, and while I think there is genuine anger beneath, there is also amused affection.Ĭolonna is pragmatic, detached, melancholy, dry, not unamused, occasionally disgusted, and his story and development have their own interest. One of the pleasures of the book is the way it casually but persuasively takes apart modern journalism, its techniques, ulterior motives, deliberate stupidity, laziness and corruption. Signor Berlusconi, media tycoon and (at that time) aspiring establishment figure, is never mentioned by name, but there are signals pointing in his direction, while the UK and US media also attract plenty of attention. The newspaper will be quietly knocked on the head and the compromising stories dropped if he gets what he wants. In truth, it’s a political manoeuvre to blackmail the profoundly corrupt Italian establishment into accepting the proprietor into their circle. The first dummy issue will be made up of old stories to show how it would work with fresh news, or at least that’s what the journalists are told.

The set-up is this: it’s 1992 and the narrator–protagonist, Colonna, a middle-aged hack writer/editor who has given up on his literary ambitions, is hired by a more-or-less mysterious employer to help with the establishment of a peculiar new newspaper, a muckraking enterprise with a difference. If that sounds like a bit of a mess and possibly hard going, in fact it’s jolly and generally entertaining, if slightly uneven. It’s like an Arabian Nights for conspiracy theorists, historians of the late 20th century and political sceptics, with stories within stories, asides, facts, speculation, satire and nods to the past and future. For a short novel, Numero Zero is amazingly leisurely and discursive.

Numero zero book review