In this exhilarating book, we accompany Umberto Eco as he explores the intricacies of fictional form and method. Using examples ranging from fairy tales and Flaubert, Poe and Mickey Spillane, Eco draws us in by means of a novelist's techniques, making us his collaborators in the creation of his text and in the investigation of some of fiction's most basic mechanisms.

Umberto Eco teaches at the University of Bologna and is the author of many books, including Theory of Semiotics, The Role of the Reader, and The Open Work, as well as the best-selling novels The Name of the Rose and Foucault's Pendulum.

Read More by Umberto Eco:

• The Aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas
• The Open Work
• The Aesthetics of Chaosmos: The Middle Ages of James Joyce