Umberto Eco looks like a genial mentor, white-bearded and approachable, his comfortable rotundity settled deep in the softest armchair of his Milan living room. Yet the 73-year-old academic and author, condemned to international celebrity by his 1980 debut novel
The Name of the Rose,
is not without thorns. Today's discourse ranging from his newest work of fiction,
The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana,
to politics, religion and neckties bristles with sharp observations. Avuncular he may seem, but this famous European intellectual has not mellowed with age.
Age, memory and nostalgia are, however, the central themes of...
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