The Name of the Rose

My partner was in Italy last week on business and he brought me a copy of Umberto Eco’s Il nome della rosa (The Name of the Rose) back with him for me to read. While I’m not actively learning Italian, I enjoy reading Italian books and magazines and find it a brilliant way to improve my Italian reading skills and broaden my (passive) vocabulary.

Il nome della rosa will be the first Italian-language book that I will read which I haven’t already read in English. I read the Italian translations of The Da Vinci Code and Harry Potter & The Half-Blood Prince some time ago and didn’t have too much trouble reading them…of course, knowing what the book is about does help a great deal! I read one of Eco’s other books, an English translation of  Foucalt’s Pendulum, last month and, as I mentioned in my previous post, he has the habit of using rare words and intricate metaphor in his works.

Seeing that I stumbled on the occasional word in a translated edition, I’m certain I’ll have to keep my Italian-English dictionaries quite close by when I make a start on Il nome della rosa later this week…