Il Nome della rosa
When I first read Il Nome della Rosa, or, rather, The Name of the Rose, I must admit, I was lost. It was quite a sedentary book, with not a lot of action and excitement. Having been accustomed to reading books with panache in them, I happened to find the book quite stifling. There seemed to be a lot of philosophy, throwing in of arduous words which, even when read with context, seemed extremely hard to understand. I stopped reading midway, deciding that this wasn't for me.
A couple of years ago, I decided to revisit the book. And I read the entire book in a couple of days, gulping in quite a lot of what author Umberto Eco had to throw at me, forgetting, at times, that you had to resurface to take in some air, lest you drown. It is a masterpiece. The trendsetter from which, surely, Dan Brown must have taken inspiration, The Name of the Rose has everything. At its very core it is a murder mystery, set in the year 1327, the events taking place in an Italian monastery. Our hero is William of Baskerville, him of the long height, and thin frame, and beaky nose. It is obvious that Eco was inspired by Sherlock Holmes when he created the character, right down to the physical appearance. Adso of Melk acts as his Watson, and as Holmes once described Watson, as his Boswell. As William investigates the continuously rising body count in the monastery, there are intriguing debates which are conducted between William and the other monks, mainly philosophical.
This book requires patience. If you are expecting gung-ho action, then you are reading the wrong book. But this book will make you think. It's as if the murders are just a sub-plot, meant to keep the reader interested. It's the debates, and the environment in which the debates are held, the atmosphere, that this book focuses on. There is the added political tension, with the heretics involved as well.
A movie was made of the book, starring Sean Connery (of the James Bond fame) and Christian Slater (of Mr.Robot fame). The film did not do well. What is a success is the book. It is one of the best books that I have ever read, and as the esteemed author Jonathan Coe rightly put in an article for The Guardian titled 'My Hero: Umberto Eco', "Few other novels from the last 40 years have given me that fierceness of reading pleasure, a pleasure so intense you never forget it."
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| The Name of the Rose was the late great Umberto Eco's most popular work. |
This book requires patience. If you are expecting gung-ho action, then you are reading the wrong book. But this book will make you think. It's as if the murders are just a sub-plot, meant to keep the reader interested. It's the debates, and the environment in which the debates are held, the atmosphere, that this book focuses on. There is the added political tension, with the heretics involved as well.
A movie was made of the book, starring Sean Connery (of the James Bond fame) and Christian Slater (of Mr.Robot fame). The film did not do well. What is a success is the book. It is one of the best books that I have ever read, and as the esteemed author Jonathan Coe rightly put in an article for The Guardian titled 'My Hero: Umberto Eco', "Few other novels from the last 40 years have given me that fierceness of reading pleasure, a pleasure so intense you never forget it."
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