Umberto Eco, the Italian writer and philosopher best known for novels like “Foucault’s Pendulum” and “The Name of the Rose,” will publish a new novel in the United States this fall, with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

The satirical novel, “Numero Zero,” takes place in Milan in 1992 and tells the story of a struggling ghostwriter. The ghostwriter and narrator, Colonna, gets hired to write the memoir of a journalist who works at a shady publication called “Domani,” which is financed by a media baron who resembles Silvio Berlusconi. In the process, Colonna gets pulled into a world of corruption and conspiracy theories, including a plot involving the C.I.A. and the corpse of Mussolini’s body double.

“This novel is vintage Eco — corrupt newspapers, clandestine plots, imaginary histories — and will appeal to his many readers and earn him legions of new ones,” Bruce Nichols, General Interest Publisher of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, said in a statement.

“Numero Zero,” which comes out here on Nov. 3, is already a best seller in Italy, and foreign rights have sold in 34 countries.