ROMSO Cyprus Knowledge Base

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The name of the rose is a novel written by Umberto Eco and first published by Bompiani in 1980.

Already author of numerous essays, the Eco semiologist decided to write his first novel, citing himself in the genre of historical yellow and in particular of deductive yellow. However, the book can be considered a crossroads of genres, between historian, narrative and philosophical.

The work, set at the end of the year 1327, is presented with a classic literary expedient, that of the manuscript found, works, in this case, of a monk named Adso da Melk, who, now old, decides to put on paper the remarkable facts lived by novice, many decades back, in the company of his master Guglielmo da Baskerville. The story takes place within a Benedictine monastery and is divided into seven days, marked by the rhythms of monastic life.

Editorial history
Eco had already had a long-standing relationship with the Bompiani, who had published all his previous works and who would take the name of the rose "closed box". However, he thought at first to hand it over to publisher Franco Maria Ricci to publish it with a limited edition of a thousand copies in a refined volume. The news that Eco had written a novel spread quickly and the author received many proposals from the Einaudi and the Mondadori who saw potential in The name of the rose. At that point Eco returned to his steps and decided that it was worth working with his historical editor. So in 1980, the novel was published by Bompiani with a print run. The continuation of sales was "shouldered away by the achievement of literary awards from the 1981 Strega Prize and others, from news on translations and their success abroad, especially in the United States".

On 9 July 1981, eight months after the publication of the book, Il nome della rosa won the Strega Prize, the highest literary recognition in Italy. In November 1982 he obtained the Prix Médicis in France in the category foreign works. In 1983 the novel entered the "Editors' Choice" of The New York Times, in 1999 it was selected from "The 100 books of the century" by the French newspaper Le Monde and in 2009 it was included in the list of "1000 novels that everyone should read" by the English newspaper "The Guardian".

The novel has been reissued several times over the years and has come to sell about 50 million copies in Italy and the rest of the world, where it has been translated into over 40 languages. In 2002 it was the subject of a curious phenomenon, thanks to the launch of an editorial initiative of the newspaper La Repubblica that distributed it for free in over a million copies.

In May 2020 the publishing house La Nave di Teseo, founded by Eco himself, publishes a version of the novel enriched with drawings and preparatory notes of the author.

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