Book Bearings
The Name of the Rose
- 533 pages · about 9 hours
- First published 1980
- 151 editions
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1 About this book
In 1327 the Franciscan friar William of Baskerville and his young assistant, Adso of Melk, arrive at a Benedictine abbey in northern Italy, where a meeting is to be held on a dispute between the Pope and the Franciscans. A monk has just met a suspicious death, and the abbot asks William, a former inquisitor, to look into it. More deaths follow over the next days, and the trail leads toward the abbey's great library, built as a labyrinth. Umberto Eco's first novel was published in Italian in 1980 and in English, translated by William Weaver, in 1983.
- Church history
- Mystery
- Thrillers
- Mystery & detective, historical
- Monastic and religious life
- Semiotics
- Middle Ages
- Libraries
2 What to expect
A murder mystery set in an Italian monastery in 1327, in which a sharp-witted friar and his young assistant investigate a series of deaths connected with a labyrinthine library. It is also a novel of ideas, thick with medieval theology, heresy, church politics and Latin, and the detective story sometimes waits while monks debate. It is long and learned, slow at first, and rich in atmosphere.
Good for readers who want: a historical mystery, medieval monasteries and libraries, and a rich, learned read.
3 About Umberto Eco
Bio adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)
4 More by Umberto Eco
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