Umberto Eco

He died from pancreatic cancer, which he had been suffering from for two years on February 19, 2016 at the age of 84. At the time he died, he was a professor emeritus at the University of Bologna, a post he had held since the year 2008. He is the son of a man that was an accountant before he was drafted to fight in three different wars, whose name was Giulio Eco.

The best place to start is The Charles Eliot Norton Lectures series, the earliest of Umberto Eco's multi-book series: it opens with The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead (1913) and runs to 11 books across 1913–2016, ending with The Origin of Others (2016). Umberto Eco's other series stand alone, so they can be read in any order.

Umberto Eco has 73 books catalogued in this guide, published between 1913 and 2023. 16 of them belong to 3 named series — the largest being The Charles Eliot Norton Lectures series with 11 books — and 57 are standalone titles, collections or anthologies.

Read each series in publication order — the numbered entries in each series follow the year each book first appeared. Umberto Eco's series do not depend on one another, so they can be started in any order; by start date they are The Charles Eliot Norton Lectures (1913–2016, 11 books), Save the Story (2010–2011, 4 books) and Le Nom de la Rose (2023, 1 book).

This guide splits Umberto Eco's 73 books into 3 named series and 57 titles that stand alone or appear only in collections: The Charles Eliot Norton Lectures (11 books, 1913–2016); Save the Story (4 books, 2010–2011); Le Nom de la Rose (1 book, 2023).