Umberto Eco Books in Order

Umberto Eco was a semiotician - a professor of signs - who wrote a medieval detective novel in 1980 to see if he could, and accidentally sold fifty million copies. The Name of the Rose is a murder mystery in a monastery library, narrated by a novice and powered by the argument that laughter might not be heretical; it became a film with Sean Connery and made Eco the only semiotician most people can name. His seven novels are all about the same thing - the dangerous pleasure of systems of knowledge, and the people who drown in them. He died in February 2016; the shelf is closed. This page maps it in order and warns you honestly about the second book (1980–2015).

Where to start

The Name of the Rose (1980), the door - obviously.

Does the reading order matter?

Publication order, with size warnings. The Name of the Rose (1980; English 1983) is the door: William of Baskerville, seven deaths in seven days, and a library built like a labyrinth. Foucault's Pendulum (1988) is the trap: three underemployed editors invent a conspiracy for fun and the world obliges - it is the plan nine hundred pages long that readers famously start and do not famously finish; if it defeats you, skip forward without shame, the point of the book is in the last hundred pages anyway. The Island of the Day Before (1994) is the Baroque shipwreck; Baudolino (2000) is the playful one - a liar's memoir of the Middle Ages, the best second door. The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana (2004) is the illustrated novel, a book dealer waking inside his own memory, done with actual comic strips and schoolbooks from Eco's collection. The Prague Cemetery (2010) is the darkest - the forgery of the Protocols narrated by its fictional author, a book Eco called his most cinematic. Numero Zero (2015) is the short late satire on journalism, his last novel. The essay shelves - Travels in Hyperreality, The Open Work - are the other Eco and worth him too

Which one is the best?

The Name of the Rose (1980); Baudolino (2000); Foucault's Pendulum (1988), for the fearless.

Related guides

Readers finishing this shelf usually want the map next door: Dante Alighieri books in order, Miguel de Cervantes books in order, Marcel Proust books in order. Every guide follows the same format — the shelf, the entry point, the honest answer about order.

Make it a project

Pick a session size and let the days accumulate — at the pace our reading speed test measures, most shelves above clear in a few weeks of half-hours. Every guide on the books in order shelf follows this same format, and when a book lands, its 8-question quiz is waiting on the original book quiz.