The Name of the Rose

Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose opens in 1327, when William of Baskerville, a Franciscan friar, travels to a Benedictine monastery in northern Italy with his novice, Adso of Melk, for a theological debate. The monastery has been chosen as neutral ground in a dispute over apostolic poverty between the Franciscans and Pope John XXII, and one of the monks, Adelmo of Otranto, has died there in suspicious circumstances. The abbot gives the case to William, who once served as an inquisitor, and a second death follows the first.

The abbey's library is the centre of the problem: it is the largest part of the building and the only monk permitted to enter it is the librarian, so that the books William needs to consult are closed to him along with everything the abbey is concealing. His inquiries bring him into argument with Jorge of Burgos, among the oldest monks in the house, over what may be said and laughed at.

The Name of the Rose was Eco's debut novel, published in 1980, and it combines a historical murder mystery with medieval studies, biblical analysis and literary theory; William Weaver's English translation followed in 1983. The novel received the Strega Prize in 1981 and the Prix Medicis Etranger in 1982, and it was ranked fourteenth on Le Monde's list of the hundred books of the century.