Umberto Eco

Umberto Eco (1932–2016) was an Italian medievalist, philosopher, semiotician and novelist, and a longtime columnist for the magazine L'Espresso. He is best known in English for The Name of the Rose (1980), a historical mystery, and Foucault's Pendulum (1988), a novel that touches on the history of occultism. His other books include The Island of the Day Before, The Prague Cemetery, History of Beauty and On Ugliness, along with children's books and essays. He taught at the University of Bologna for much of his life.