Umberto Eco - Postscript To The Name Of The Rose

Postscript To The Name Of The Rose

This book stems from Umberto Eco's account of the genesis of his extraordinary novel, The Name of the Rose, but, like the novel itself, it goes far beyond the particular: '...in March 1978 ... I had the urge to poison a monk.' Along the way, it touches on bad books, ideal readers, historical form, and the metaphysics of the detective story. 

Umberto Eco, OMRI (born 5 January 1932) is an Italian semiotician, essayist, philosopher, literary critic, and novelist. He is best known for his groundbreaking 1980 historical mystery novel Il nome della rosa (The Name of the Rose), an intellectual mystery combining semiotics in fiction, biblical analysis, medieval studies and literary theory. He has since written further novels, including Il pendolo di Foucault (Foucault's Pendulum) and L'isola del giorno prima (The Island of the Day Before). His most recent novel Il cimitero di Praga (The Prague Cemetery), released in 2010, was a best-seller.

Eco has also written academic texts, children's books and many essays. He is founder of the Dipartimento di Comunicazione (Department of Media Studies) at the University of the Republic of San Marino, President of the Scuola Superiore di Studi Umanistici (Graduate School for the Study of the Humanities), University of Bologna, member of the Accademia dei Lincei (since November 2010), and an Honorary Fellow of Kellogg College, University of Oxford.