Rediscovering Umberto Eco’s semiotics masterpiece The Name of the Rose as an audiobook felt like the joy of seeing a book that deeply moved me in childhood reborn as a film. Regarded as one of the greatest masterpieces of detective fiction, this work delivers an overwhelmingly immersive experience. It centers on the secrets and conspiracies among monks surrounding a series of murders at a monastery, and the breathless investigation by Brother William as he unravels the mystery. Having already been adapted into a film, I searched for it on OTT services like Netflix, but unfortunately, it wasn’t readily available. True to the work of Umberto Eco, the foremost semiotician of his time, the character portrayals, plot development, and intricate relationships woven into the mysterious events within the monastery offer the thrilling fun and tension of deciphering a complex code.

When a series of mysterious deaths occurs within the cloistered monastery, where outsiders rarely intrude, William of Baskerville, a Franciscan friar educated at Oxford, is dispatched to investigate. The novel is a seven-day chronicle written from the perspective of Adso, the novice who accompanies and assists William. This structure, reminiscent of the ‘Sherlock Holmes and Watson’ dynamic, enhances the pleasure of analyzing the case up close, thanks to the diary-like format containing Adso’s meticulous observations and personal anguish. Despite its substantial two-volume length, it was a thrilling novel that felt as if you were right there with them, traversing the crime scenes within the monastery.