Will I love The Name of the Rose?

It is difficult to imagine a list of great novels about the Middle Ages that does not include this book.

I read it first when I was in graduate school, and it brought so much of what I was studying to life – the monastic world of its setting with all its contradictions and spectacular architecture; fights over religion and the true nature of spirituality; the non-linear nature of medieval literature. 

I love how it can be read on one level as a page-turny murder mystery and on another as a post-modern novel that explores the nature of signs and… show more.

What’s not to love about a medieval setting? History proves the medieval period was nothing but whispers, political debauchery, and plenty of murders to keep a secret, power, or both. I love the progression through the doubts and anxiety of searching for a murderer inside a protected, entitled organization.

Bureaucrats have a secret and are desperate and willing to keep it. I love the intertwining of history and allusions to past literature. Is William of Baskerville, the protagonist, written in the image of Sherlock Holmes? There are others throughout the book. See how many you can find. 

I loved this book because it’s a medieval detective story set in 1327 in Italy. I learned a lot about the intrigue and corruption of religious life in the medieval period and how closed and isolated communities could lose their way with murderous consequences.

It’s a fascinating insight into the world of a monk’s life in 14th-century Italy, packed full of the atmosphere of religious life inside the abbey. It is a dark and gothic tale of corruption, murder, and power-grabbing at all costs.

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.