Secret histories

Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 50. Chapters: The Illuminatus! Trilogy, Procopius, Foucault's Pendulum, The Crying of Lot 49, I, Claudius, The Historian, Gravity's Rainbow, The Day of the Jackal, The Mists of Avalon, Secret history, The Eagle Has Landed, The Secret History, Eye of the Needle, Mason & Dixon, Captain Nemo: The Fantastic History of a Dark Genius, Dictionary of the Khazars, The Berkut, The Man from St. Petersburg, The Pyramid. The Soviet Mafia, The Night Letter, Wainscot, Count Belisarius, The Martian War, The Little White Car, Imperial Moon, The Last Crossing, Enigma, XPD, The Islands of Unwisdom. Excerpt: The Illuminatus! Trilogy is a series of three novels written by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson first published in 1975. The trilogy is a satirical, postmodern, science fiction-influenced adventure story; a drug-, sex- and magick-laden trek through a number of conspiracy theories, both historical and imaginary, which hinge around the authors' version of the Illuminati. The narrative often switches between third and first person perspectives and jumps around in time. It is thematically dense, covering topics like counterculture, numerology and Discordianism. The trilogy comprises The Eye in the Pyramid, The Golden Apple and Leviathan. They were first published as three separate volumes starting in September 1975. In 1984 they were published as an omnibus edition, and are now more commonly reprinted in the latter form. In 1986 the trilogy won the Prometheus Hall of Fame Award, designed to honor classic libertarian fiction. The authors went on to write several works, both fiction and nonfiction, that dealt further with the themes of the trilogy, but they did not write any direct sequels. Illuminatus! has been adapted for the stage, and has influenced several modern writers, musicians and games-makers. The popularity of the word "fnord" and the 23 enigma can both be attributed to the trilogy. It remains a seminal work of conspiracy fiction, predating by years such novels as Foucault's Pendulum and The Da Vinci Code. The plot meanders between the thoughts, hallucinations and inner voices (both real and imagined) of its many characters, as well as through time (past, present and future)- sometimes in mid-sentence. Much of the back story is explained via dialogue between characters, who recount unreliable, often mutually contradictory, versions of their supposed histories. There are even parts in the book in which the narrative reviews and jokingly deconstructs the work itself. Paperback reprint of the collected editionThe trilogy's rambling story begins with an invest