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The name of the rose pages5/10/2023 ![]() ![]() For Eco’s novel, fluidly translated by William Weaver, is not only an entertaining narrative of a murder investigation in a monastery in 1327. In the U.S., where the Middle Ages are less modish than in Europe, the book’s popularity depends on how much medieval esoterica readers are willing to slog through to reach the heart of the story. By far the most successful of his writings, The Name of the Rose won the two top literary awards in Italy, the Premio Strega and the Premio Viareggio, and has sold 500.000 copies there since 1980. ![]() So it is with Umberto Eco’s first novel, The Name of the Rose, a Sherlock Holmesian fantasy in a medieval setting.Įco, 51, is the author of a study of the sources of James Joyce’s language, as well as more than a dozen other scholarly works, including The Role of the Reader: Explorations in the Semiotics of Texts (Indiana University Press 1979). When a renowned Italian expert in semiotics, the arcane science of signs, sets out to write a thriller, the resulting fiction is bound to bristle with more obscure clues, mysterious ciphers and symbolic happenings than were ever conjured up by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich 502 pages $15.95 ![]()
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