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Thanks to its worldwide, Hollywood-assisted fame of Eco’s Il nome della rosa (The Name of the Rose, 1980) has overshadowed, at leat in the English-speaking world, both Eco’s later novels and the work of his contemporaries Antonio Tabucchi and Vincenzo Consolo. This comprehensive and intelligent study should help to restore the balance. Writing from an avowedly but not dogmatically leftist perspective—in the tradition of Gramsci, Jameson, and Deleuze—Francese (Michigan State Univ.) provides a thorough introduction to Rose and Eco’s subsequent fiction (Il pendolo di Foucault, L’isola del giorno prima, Baudolino, La misteriosa fiamma della Regina Loana), and he makes some astute theoretical reflections deriving from Eco’s own concept of the “model reader.” An “interlude” surveys Consolo’s “poetics of memory,” especially in Retablo (1987) and Oratorio (2002). In the second half of the book, Francese undertakes an exhaustive analysis of Tabucchi’s recent output: Si sta facendo sempre più tardi (2001), Autobiografie altrui (2003), and Tristano muore (2004). Francese’s magisterial coverage of several important books as yet barely known outside Italy makes this volume invaluable. Summing Up: Essential. All readers; all levels.

S. Botterill, University of California, Berkeley, Choice, October 2006