Umberto eco zero5/26/2023 ![]() In popular culture, Eco himself is too often defined by one novel, The Name of the Rose, his debut novel, for many represented by the image of Sean Connery in monk’s cassock. ![]() So it was a strange moment for me to finish reading his latest novel Número Zero and barely two days later to be shocked to hear of his death. These very questions about the relationship between words and the world have been explored and analysed, philosophised over and played with through the life’s work of Umberto Eco. How does their death affect the meaning of what we have just read, especially now it has become the fabled ‘last novel’? What does it say about the relationship of the author to their work? Why should the author’s life or death influence the words on the page? Why, as readers, do we need to know there is an author behind the book we are holding? What shadow is cast over the page by the author? That sense of loss is unnervingly heightened when we finish a novel only for the author to die a few days later. As readers we often feel a sense of melancholy when we come to the end of a book we have enjoyed. ![]()
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