Böcker av Umberto Eco

But who are 'they'?HOW TO SPOT A FASCIST is a selection of three thought-provoking essays on freedom and fascism, censorship and tolerance - including Eco's iconic essay 'Ur-Fascism', which lists the fourteen essential characteristics of fascism, and draws on his own personal experiences growing up in the shadow of Mussolini.

They start feeding random bits of information into a powerful computer capable of inventing connections between the entries, thinking they are creating nothing more than an amusing game, but then their game starts to take over, the deaths start mounting, and they are forced into a frantic search for the truth

Covers a range of topics on which the author has written and lectured over the years. This book explores lost islands, mythical realms, and the medieval world in the process - to a disquisition on the theme that runs through his novel, "The Prague Cemetery".

Remarkably accessible and unfailingly stimulating, this collection of essays exhibits the diversity of interests and the depth of knowledge that made Umberto Eco one of the world's leading writers.

Franciscans in a wealthy Italian abbey are suspected of heresy, and Brother William of Baskerville arrives to investigate.When his delicate mission is suddenly overshadowed by seven bizarre deaths, Brother William turns detective.

The final collection of essays from the internationally acclaimed and bestselling author of The Name of the Rose and The Prague Cemetery, on the subjects of art and culture.In this collection of essays we find Umberto Eco’s perennial areas of interest explored in a lively and engaging style, accompanied by beautiful reproductions of the art he discusses. In these wide-ranging pieces he explores the roots of our civilization, changing ideas of beauty, our obsession with conspiracies and the emblematic heroes of the great narrative, amongst other fascinating topics.Umberto Eco was one of the most influential, and entertaining, intellectuals of the last century, as well as being a critically acclaimed and bestselling writer of both fiction and non-fiction.

A celebrated essayist as well as novelist, the author presents articles, which he writes for his regular column in l'Espresso magazine, that explore many aspects of the modern world such as: a crisis in ideological values, a crisis in politics, and unbridled individualism.

Umberto Eco published his first novel, The Name of the Rose, in 1980, when he was nearly fifty. In these "confessions" the author, now in his late seventies, looks back on his long career as a theorist and his more recent work as a novelist and explores their fruitful conjunction. This book takes readers on a tour of Eco's own creative method.

After the Cold War, the 'Hot War' has made its comeback in Afghanistan and Iraq. With his customary sharpness and wit, Eco proposes, not so much that we resume a forward march, but at the very least that we cease marching backwards.

Tackling topics as diverse as the coffee pot from hell, eating on an aeroplane, how not to use a cellular phone and recognising porn movies, Umberto Eco guides us with all his customary wit and brilliance through the complexities of the modern world.

A summary of mediaeval aesthetic ideas, by Italian novelist and playwright Umberto Eco. Juxtaposing theology and science, poetry and mysticism, Eco explores the relationship that existed between the aesthetic theories and the artistic experience and practice of mediaeval culture.

Who is killing monks in a great medieval abbey famed for its library - and why? Brother William of Baskerville is sent to find out, taking with him the assistant who later tells the tale of his investigations. This story combines elements of detective fiction, metaphysical thriller, post-modernist puzzle and historical novel.

An extraordinary epic, brilliantly-imagined, new novel from a world-class writer and author of The Name of the Rose. Amid the carnage and confusion Baudolino saves a Byzantine historian and high court official from certain death at the hands of the crusading warriors, and proceeds to tell his own fantastical story.

Holography, wax museums, the secret meaning of spectator sports, Superman and the intellectual effects of over-tight jeans are just a few of the subjects covered in this collection of witty, entertaining and thought-provoking delights from Umberto Eco, celebrated author of The Name of the Rose.

This new and expanded edition of Talking of Joyce focuses on James Joyce's cultural ancestry - aesthetic and linguistic, in particular - and his Italian influences and connections. This volume brings to light fascinating aspects of Ireland's most famous literary figure and places him in a wider cultural context.

A posthumous collection of essays by internationally renowned essayist, literary critic, philosopher, and author of The Name of the Rose--"one of the most influential thinkers of our time" (Los Angeles Times)In his final collection of works, celebrated essayist and novelist Umberto Eco observes the changing world around him with irrepressible curiosity and profound wisdom. He sees with fresh eyes the upheaval in ideological values, the crises in politics, and the unbridled individualism that have become the backdrop of our lives--a "liquid" society in which it's not easy to find a polestar, though stars and starlets abound. In these pieces, written for his regular column in L'Espresso magazine, Eco brings his dazzling erudition and keen sense of the everyday to bear on topics such as popular culture and politics, being seen, conspiracies, the old and the young, new technologies, mass media, racism, and good manners. It is a final gift to his readers--astute, witty, and illuminating.

The Prague Cemetery is the #1 international bestseller from the award-winning and New York Times best-selling author of The Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco.Vintage Eco...the book is a triumph.--New York Review of BooksNineteenth-century Europe--from Turin to Prague to Paris--abounds with the ghastly and the mysterious. Jesuits plot against Freemasons. Italian republicans strangle priests with their own intestines. French criminals plan bombings by day and celebrate Black Masses at night.Every nation has its own secret service, perpetrating forgeries, plots, and massacres. Conspiracies rule history. From the unification of Italy to the Paris Commune to the Dreyfus Affair to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Europe is in tumult and everyone needs a scapegoat.But what if behind all of these conspiracies, both real and imagined, lay one lone man?Choreographed by a truth that is itself so strange a novelist need hardly expand on it to produce a wondrous tale...Eco is to be applauded for bringing this stranger-than-fiction truth vividly to life.--New York Times

Umberto Eco explores the most distant realms of our imagination.

Focuses on what the author once called 'the cancer of uncontrolled interpretation' - that is, the belief that many interpreters have gone too far in their domination of texts, thereby destroying meaning and the basis for communication. This book begins with four theoretical essays dealing with various aspects of interpretive theory.

1945, Lake Como. Mussolini and his mistress are captured by local partisans and shot in a summary execution. The precise circumstances of Il Duce's death remain shrouded in confusion and controversy. 1992, Milan. Colonna, a depressed writer picking up hack work, is offered a fee he can't refuse to ghost-write a memoir.

Best-selling author Umberto Eco's latest work unlocks the riddles of history in an exploration of the "e;linguistics of the lunatic,"e; stories told by scholars, scientists, poets, fanatics, and ordinary people in order to make sense of the world. Exploring the "e;Force of the False,"e; Eco uncovers layers of mistakes that have shaped human history, such as Columbus's assumption that the world was much smaller than it is, leading him to seek out a quick route to the East via the West and thus fortuitously "e;discovering"e; America. The fictions that grew up around the cults of the Rosicrucians and Knights Templar were the result of a letter from a mysterious "e;Prester John"e;-undoubtedly a hoax-that provided fertile ground for a series of delusions and conspiracy theories based on religious, ethnic, and racial prejudices. While some false tales produce new knowledge (like Columbus's discovery of America) and others create nothing but horror and shame (the Rosicrucian story wound up fueling European anti-Semitism) they are all powerfully persuasive.In a careful unraveling of the fabulous and the false, Eco shows us how serendipities-unanticipated truths-often spring from mistaken ideas. From Leibniz's belief that the I Ching illustrated the principles of calculus to Marco Polo's mistaking a rhinoceros for a unicorn, Eco tours the labyrinth of intellectual history, illuminating the ways in which we project the familiar onto the strange.Eco uncovers a rich history of linguistic endeavor-much of it ill-conceived-that sought to "e;heal the wound of Babel."e; Through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, Greek, Hebrew, Chinese, and Egyptian were alternately proclaimed as the first language that God gave to Adam, while-in keeping with the colonial climate of the time-the complex language of the Amerindians in Mexico was viewed as crude and diabolical. In closing, Eco considers the erroneous notion of linguistic perfection and shrewdly observes that the dangers we face lie not in the rules we use to interpret other cultures but in our insistence on making these rules absolute.With the startling combination of erudition and wit, bewildering anecdotes and scholarly rigor that are Eco's hallmarks, Serendipities is sure to entertain and enlighten any reader with a passion for the curious history of languages and ideas.

Nineteenth-century Europe abounds with conspiracy both ghastly and mysterious. Jesuits plot against Freemasons. French criminals plan bombings by day and celebrate black masses by night. Every nation has its own secret service, perpetrating forgeries, plots, and massacres.

In this book Umberto Eco argues that translation is not about comparing two languages, but about the interpretation of a text in two different languages, thus involving a shift between cultures.

In this collection of nine essays, Umberto Eco sets forth a dialectic between 'open' and 'closed' texts, between a work of art that actively involves the 'addressee' in its production and one that holds the 'addressee' at bay and seeks to evoke a limited and predetermined response. He investigates the contributions of contemporary semantics to the study of narrative, and connects the modalities of textual interpretation with the problem of possible worlds.

Umberto Eco undertakes a series of idiosyncratic and typically brilliant explorations, starting from the perceived data of common sense, from which flow an abundance of 'stories' or fables, often with animals as protagonists, to expound a clear critique of Kant, Heidegger and Peirce.