The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco. A difficult book. It is necessary to cling. I imagine easily that if an unknown author presented a manuscript of this kind to editors, it would never be published so much it is necessary, nowadays, to slip into a well defined[BR]category: sentimental novel, espionage, erotism etc.[BR]It is necessary also that your novel resemble that of another author[BR]who is sold well. [BR] The editors, who say all to seek "new voices"[BR]have, in fact, horror of the innovation and the major originality. Then, they are folded back on the surface originality, that which consists in torturing the style, to darken the comprehension of the intrigue or simply to scrape the navel during 300 pages. If one clings, the Name of the Rose involves you in a world at the same time completed and fantastic, much more fantastic and much more attractive than the stories of science fiction or those imaginary creatures [BR]endowed with magic capacities which populate the gothic novels .[BR] A completed world, certainly, but whose characteristics still exist in the[BR]hearts of the religious or political extremism (the same thing, in both cases: same intolerance, same cruelty, same horrors). The hairsplitters, the tyrants of politically correct, the hypocrites and the perverts are always among us. Their methods and their targets[BR]changed name but not nature. This completed world is at the same time eternal and universal. It is with this universality that one recognizes the masterpieces. One forgives then the lengths. They exist. It should be said. Umberto insists heavily to prove to us that he[BR]knows perfectly all the political and religious tendencies of the fourteenth century, including most obscure and most transitory. But one really forgives him....