Umberto Eco's fifth novel, The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana, is by far the most autobiographical of his books, clearly referring to episodes and experiences of his Piedmontese childhood. It not only deals with personal memories of a profoundly sorrowful period in Italian history – the Fascist era and the Second world war – but also with the literature and culture of that same period. And if yambo, the protagonist of the book, is not exactly Eco, he is definitely a man to whom Eco has loaned some of his deepest memories and a man who has experienced the childhood, the education, the Italy of the thirties and forties, Fascism, the war, the Resistance movement – in summary, all the main events of Eco's generation. Like Eco, the young yambo has read The Phantom, Mandrake the Magician, Flash Gordon, and Mickey Mouse; he remembers the rhythms of Italian popular songs of the 1930s, he recognizes the soundtrack of Casablanca, he has smelled Vichy cologne, and has tasted Idrolitina selzer water.

When yambo wakes up from a coma in the very beginning of the book, he has forgotten his identity: he has lost his autobiographic or episodic memory, while he still retains his implicit memory (which registers automatisms, like brushing one's teeth) and his explicit memory (which can be both semantic – the ability to remember historical data, for example – and public – which comprises common knowledge, such as the fact that birds fly).