This podcast was first posted on February 20, 2016.

[caption id="attachment_354703" align="alignleft" width="376"] Umberto Eco and Richard Wolinsky in the KPFA studios[/caption]

A conversation with Umberto Eco (1932-2016), author of Name of the Rose, Foucault's Pendulum, and other novels.

Umberto Eco, who died on February 19, 2016 at the age of 84, was one of the world’s leading semiologists, studying the relationship of signs and symbols to meaning and language. He was also a well-known and well respected novelist. The Name of the Rose, a detective novel set in the middle ages, became a surprise best-seller, and he followed it up with Foucault’s Pendulum, which dealt with world conspiracies, and five later novels.

On June 15, 2005, Richard Wolinsky sat down with Umberto Eco in the KPFA studios while the Italian writer was on tour for his latest novel, The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana. It would be the last time Umberto Eco reached the West Coast to speak about his work.

Radio Wolinsky page photo: Erinc Salor, Wiki Creative Commons.