Books in the Richard Ellmann Lectures in Modern Literature (HUP) series

When a master novelist, essayist, and critic searches for the wellsprings of his own work, where does he turn? Mario Vargas Llosa-Peruvian writer, presidential contender, and public intellectual-answers this most personal question with elegant concision in this collection of essays.

Umberto Eco published his first novel, The Name of the Rose, in 1980, when he was nearly fifty. In these "confessions" the author, now in his late seventies, looks back on his long career as a theorist and his more recent work as a novelist and explores their fruitful conjunction. This book takes readers on a tour of Eco's own creative method.