Umberto Eco has died. According to The New York Times, the Italian writer was 84 years old.
BBC News reports that Eco produced a wide variety of work throughout his career including novels, children’s books, and literary criticism. He gained great renown as a fiction writer for his 1980 mystery novel, The Name of The Rose.
Here’s more from The Guardian: “The author, who had been suffering from cancer, passed away at 9.30pm (8.30pm GMT) on Friday, La Repubblica said on its website. He was the 1992-3 Norton professor at Harvard and taught semiotics at Bologna University and once suggested that writing novels was a mere part-time occupation, saying: ‘I am a philosopher; I write novels only on the weekends.'” (Photo Credit: Augusto Casasoli)