Continuing from the last in the series of journalism, here Burgess reviews Umberto Eco’s most famous novel, The Name of the Rose. The novel, a murder mystery set in a Benedictine monastery in the year 1327. Eco’s protagonist, William of Baskerville, a Franciscan friar, is modeled on Sherlock Holmes, and undertakes an investigation into a series of mysterious deaths at the monastery. Eco would later approach Burgess to assist in the writing of a film adaptation of The Name of the Rose, though the project never came to fruition. The novel was eventually adapted into a film starring Sean Connery and Christian Slater in 1986, and directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud, who had worked with Burgess on Quest for Fire (1981).

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