The Name of the Rose

I don't think there is an author who hasn't at least once wished that he was the one who wrote a book by another author. Ever since I first read Umberto Eco's masterpiece, I wished I had written it. That wish only intensified whenever I reread it—and I did it many times. It is a perfect novel by all standards. It is a superb literary work based on storytelling virtuosity and a colossal erudition.

The detective narrative drive is a background of the main theme—how the Renaissance was borne. No other novel in the history of literature has managed to… show more.

You saw this rec coming, right? Although this is a novel rather than a straight history, Eco’s story is probably the one that started me on my own nerdy path to book history and book sleuthing. I read it as an impressionable freshman in college, and its descriptions of monastic manuscripts imprinted themselves on me before I ever saw an example of an illuminated book in the flesh.

Murder, medieval abbeys, and old musty books… what’s not to love? In fact, I’m going to take my own advice and reread this one right now—for pure nostalgia and enjoyment. 

I came away feeling smarter; I was also entertained. This is an endlessly clever, massively erudite historical detective novel. It carries its learning so lightly that one slips effortlessly into the world of a fourteenth-century Italian abbey, where strange murders are occurring, and the hunt is on for a long-lost manuscript from ancient antiquity.

The novel is full of literary in-jokes – the detective is called William of Baskerville – and just trying to pick up on all those is a delight. The plot grabs one, and the finale is unforgettable.

One of the first books I ever read set in the medieval period that hooked me on historical mysteries set in medieval/Tudor times.

Eco’s plot is absolutely unique and memorable. The story is dotted with eccentric monks who do not always follow the rules. The atmosphere feels incredibly well done. I feel present in the cavernous stone abbey, with the winter chill and sinister machinations that seep straight into my bones.

A true genre classic, they even made it into a movie starring Sean Connery.

A dark, twisted story of intrigue within the walls of an abbey in the fourteenth century.

Every character has some dark past that they are hiding, and everyone is part of the ever-deepening mystery, riddles piling upon riddles, as bodies pile upon bodies. The further into the abbey’s maze of secrets you become entangled, the more you’ll love it. The characters are deep and complicated, the world in which they live is richly imagined, and the final denouement will leave you breathless.

A book whose mysteries and philosophical dialogues will stay with you long after you close the final page. 

As detailed as Virga, as teeming with real intellectual life as Yourcenar, Eco stunned the world in 1980 with this dark murder mystery set in a remote Italian Abbey in 1327.

The intricate architecture of the abbey hides enigmas and anomalies – historical, philosophical, doctrinal – and a cast of bizarre and idiosyncratic monks murdered one by one in symbolic ways by an unseen and seemingly all-powerful hand. Only a mind as encyclopedic and facile as Friar William of Baskerville can follow the thread to the demonic abbot hellbent on punishing humanity for laughing.

Unique on so many levels, The… show more.

Eco’s mystery masterpiece weaves together intrigue and humanity in a way that is absolutely compelling, especially if you love medieval illuminations and monastic communities like I do. The book is a literary beauty as well as a compelling mystery that will keep you guessing and turning the pages with furious curiosity. Not a casual read but one that will urge you forward and deeper into a dark but beautiful world. 

Set in an Italian monastery in the 14th century, the book, by renowned philosopher Umberto Eco, is full of monkish esoterica. I loved the philosophical riffs that fill this novel, and loved the movie as well, starring Sean Connery, as the British monk sleuth. This is Eco’s only good novel, in my opinion. After writing this, he should have stuck with philosophy.

This is one of the most enjoyable and satisfying historical novels out there, not least because it is centered on a mysterious library in a mediaeval monastery, and involves a series of unexplained murders. I think this was probably one of the earliest works I read as a teenager that revolved around libraries. It is a fascinating book, and one of the finest written by Umberto Eco, a master of the genre (this was his debut novel!). While this might be fiction, Eco was always extremely careful to frame the historical context accurately, so you will learn a great deal… show more.

This stand-out historical mystery features serial murders occurring in a 14th-century Benedictine monastery in a remote area of northern Italy. I love a murder mystery with a Ten Little Indians set-up: a small group of people stranded together, unable to get outside help when a killer sets to work. Who’s next? is the fear that drives the story. 

How, wonders the monk investigating the murders, can a crime be solved when there is no pattern? The writing is so wonderful it lands me right there among the monks – and the murderer. Eco has written a story towering in its… show more.