Do you want to do philosophy? Write a novel.

The suggestion belongs to Albert Camus and it seems that this is exactly what Umberto Eco decided to follow when, thirty years ago, already established as an academic, thinker, and essayist, he made his first appearance in the field of fiction with "The Name of the Rose".

A centripetal and centrifugal work, made from a heterogeneous raw material that Eco's cheerful mastery manages to creatively assemble, "The Name of the Rose" continues to captivate us after thirty years, precisely because of this indeterminate form that allows it to dwell on the boundaries between the mysterious and the self-evident, the hidden and the obvious, the adventurous and the abstract or ideological.

Elliptical because it is cumulative of particular historical -and not only- knowledge and information, gray because it is full of colors and an unexpected decor, untimely and timeless because it is established in temporal intersections and inscribes its detective, stormy plot within History, Eco's first novel now functions as a point of reference for world literature.