The Nine Doors of the Kingdom of Shadows

Eco hid a lost Aristotle in a library and poisoned the pages. Pérez-Reverte hides a devil in the variants.

Torchia’s book is, as an object, almost respectable: folio, Venice, 1666, nine woodcuts, 160 pages. The respectable part is the trap. Three copies survive the fire that took their printer, and they are not identical. Some of the engravings are signed AT, which is Torchia, and some LCF, which is the other collaborator. Corso’s job — mercenary, bookman, a man who should know better — is to collate them, which is to say to finish a ritual by doing bibliography.

That is why it belongs next to the second book of the Poetics. Both are books whose physical copies are the plot, both are hunted through a Europe of dealers and collectors, and both treat reading as a contact sport. The Delomelanicon, the Luciferian original Torchia is supposed to have adapted, is the rumour behind the rumour: a book even less available than this one, which is already down to three.

You can buy The Club Dumas. You can even buy later objects that reproduce the nine engravings. You cannot buy Torchia’s folio, and you would be unwise to collate it if you could.

On the readability rating. The novel describes the book’s history, its physical form, and the content of the woodcuts in some detail. The Latin text of the nine doors is not given. The film adaptation reproduces pictures. Pictures are not the book.