Out of many books the legendary Umberto Eco has written, “The Name of the Rose” remains one of the most symbolic and fascinating. With just a couple of hundred pages and a weeklong plot, it will take the reader on a long investigative journey of solving a suicide (or possible murder?) under the circumstances of an important political disputation being prepared.

Inspired by medieval themes, the events of the book take place at an old Italian monastery. The time slot takes us back to the 14th century, rattled by economic disasters, great geopolitical transformations and health challenges. William of Baskerville is about to dive into a fierce and symbolic international discussion whether the church should/can be wealthy and whether one can call power richness. Was Christ poor and should church be too? There’s no easy answer to that question.

Together with Adso of Melk, William discovers the depths of struggle between ethnic monks striving to preserve local dialects and at the same time keep universal access to all the library collections. Opposing them are “foreigners”, whose job it is to create scarcity and upkeep uniqueness. But which of them would go as far as killing a human?

Imagine finding yourself in a very old library, which is also a fine labyrinth full of mystique texts, items and even ghosts. Try to guess how it feels when a very high level meeting is about to take place near you, where no things can go wrong. Now imagine opening the door to a parallel reality where the only hard copy of Aristotle’s book possesses the key to finding out who is the murderer. The tension is in abundance in “The Name of the Rose”.

If you are into signs, numerology, Biblical encryption, multi-leveled semiotics, labyrinths of events and reign of logic after all – then you will definitely fall in love with the text and read it avidly during just a couple of warm home evenings.