Creation of the news
The theme of journalism becomes the central in the novel. The way that the news is creating and released to the readers is vividly described here, and the main idea of it is not that news makes the newspaper, but that the newspaper creates news. Composing a complex strip of four news items in a collection - and the reader, absorbing them, seems to have already read the fifth news – is the best way to give the reader what he thinks is important. With the help of correctly composed news, it is possible to form the news where it was not, or where no one knew what it is. And also what is essential in creating the news is not to give any references at all, because they can be checked. The best is not assertions, but insinuations. In insinuating, the newspaper does not state anything definite - only casts a shadow of suspicion.
Сonspiracies, political secrets and mysterious murders
A team of journalists consisting of rather strange people is preparing to become an engine in certain political affairs that need to be agitated among the population. Not everything is so simple, an eerie discovery interferes with the story: Mussolini was not killed, he was changed, and the Duce did his dirty work further, but secretly. Umberto Eco is always very skillfully playing on adventure plots full of secrets and conspiracies, creating intellectual works from them from which you can safely draw useful information. Being true to his manner of writing, the author develops a theme of supply and demand, the purchase of media and the sale of information, advantageous to a narrow circle of people, but consumed by the masses. Lies, profit, coupled with the investigation of the death of Mussolini, the secret services, and of course, conspiracies are the important themes opened in the novel.
Exposure of cynicism
The book is riddled with cynicism. Eco mocks modern journalism, modern society and the very nature of modern man. He emphasizes the emptiness between what people say and what they do, the difference between word / image and reality. Everything is false, truth does not make sense it is created by those who have the power. In this system, news is made, not presented, and people are by nature obsessed and selfish.
