Recommendations from our site
“It’s set in Italy in a monastery. Eco makes interesting demands on his reader. There’s a lot of philosophy, theories of knowledge. I find it very, very heartening that so many people have taken the time to read this complicated book. And I think the reason it’s been so popular is that he did this really genius thing of putting together a very complex field—semiotics or sign theory—with detective fiction, because those two things are essentially the same thing. What do clues tell you? When you have a sign, which could be a footprint, what does that footprint tell you?” Read more...
Best Medieval Historical Fiction
Marion Turner, Biographer
“I read this a few years ago and it was one of those books you always remember because it creates a whole new way of thinking. I had no idea at the time that the medieval mindset was any different to the modern one. It is about the adventure of a Franciscan friar and his novice in medieval Italy and it is part murder mystery, part game with semiotics and medieval knowledge. At university, I read lots of French books referring to this medieval period where all knowledge was supposed to be classified, and re-classified and super-classified, and it became sort of idiotic, this academic approach that these monks had. Yet there was something amazing about this belief that you could classify knowledge. It’s also very good storytelling, but the part I remember was the sort of library filled with knowledge and these games, which teased you with knowing things and not knowing things. It’s just this very complex mindset that’s really different from our own and because I knew nothing about it, it was just terribly exciting to be taken off into this world.” Read more...
Vanora Bennett, Historical Novelist
