This Is Not the End of the Book

A book lover today might sometimes feel like the fictional medieval friar William of Baskerville in Eco's The Name of the Rose, watching the written word become lost to time. In This Is Not the End of the Book, that book's author, Umberto Eco, and his fellow raconteur Jean-Claude Carriere sit down for a dazzling dialogue about memory and the pitfalls, blanks, omissions, and irredeemable losses of which it is made. Both men collect rare and precious books, and they joyously hold up books as hardy survivors, engaging in a critical, impassioned, and rollicking journey through book history, from papyrus scrolls to the e-book. Along the way, they touch upon science and subjectivity, dialectics and anecdotes, and they wear their immense learning lightly. A smiling tribute to what Marshall McLuhan called the Gutenberg Galaxy, this dialogue will be a delight for all readers and book lovers.

Umberto Eco is an Italian novelist, medievalist, semiotician, philosopher, and literary critic. He is the author of several best-selling novels, including The Name of the Rose(1983), Foucault’s Pendulum (1989), The Island of the Day Before (1995), Baudolino (2001), and The Prague Cemetery (2011). His collections of essays include Travels in Hyperreality (1986), Kant and the Platypus (1999), Serendipities (1998), Five Moral Pieces (2001), and On Literature (2004). He has also written academic texts and children’s books.

Jean-Claude Carriere is one of France’s most distinguished writers. He received the 1972 Prix Goncourt for his novel L’Épervier de Maheux. His other works include the historical drama The Controversy of Valladolid (2005) and the novel Please, Mr. Einstein (2006). With the English director Peter Brook, Carrière adapted the Indian epic poem The Mahabharata for the stage in 1987. Carrière has collaborated with many film directors, including Jacques Tati, Milos Forman, Luis Buñuel, and Jean-Luc Godard. He wrote the screenplays for The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988), Cyrano de Bergerac (1990), and The Tin Drum (1979), among many others.