The Name of the Rose cover art

The Name of the Rose

 Preview
LIMITED TIME OFFER

3 months free
Try for £0.00
£8.99/mo thereafter. Renews automatically. Terms apply. Offer ends 31 July 2025 at 23:59 GMT.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for £8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly.

The Name of the Rose

By: Umberto Eco
Narrated by: Sean Barrett
Try for £0.00

£8.99/mo after 3 months. Offer ends 31 July 2025 23:59 GMT. Cancel monthly.

Buy Now for £16.99

Buy Now for £16.99

Confirm Purchase
Pay using card ending in
Switch payment method
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.
Cancel

About this listen

Set in Italy in the Middle Ages, this is not only a narrative of a murder investigation in a monastery in 1327, but also a chronicle of the 14th-century religious wars, a history of monastic orders, and a compendium of heretical movements.

©1983 Umberto Eco (P)2010 Penguin Audio Classics Crime Fiction Historical Mystery Fiction Crime Middle Ages Italy Suspense

Listeners also enjoyed...

 Baudolino cover art
Farmer Giles of Ham cover art
The Fisherman's Testament cover art
The Hunchback of Notre Dame cover art
The Holy Thief cover art
Man in White cover art
Fifth Gospel - A Novel (Rosicrucian Quintet) cover art
Josephine Tey: The Daughter of Time & Other Mysteries cover art
Hyperion cover art
The Earth Will Shake cover art
Quicksilver cover art
Anathem cover art
The Man of Legends cover art
The Sayings of the Holy Desert Fathers cover art
Romola cover art
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man cover art
All stars
Most relevant  
This is for the patient so if you like a book that is a complex mystery historically and a slow burner this is for you

pay attention!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
A very enjoyable listen with the superb Sean Barrett narrating. Lots more background than they had time to put in the film version. I haven't read the novel so I don't know if the occasional use of Latin by the characters was presented in translation as a footnote, but I felt a knowledge of Latin would definitely have helped me appreciate the novel more. Additionally, a map of the Abbey would have come in very handy. The description of the library, which is central to the plot, is very complicated and at times difficult to envisage. These reservations apart, still worth listening to I would say.

Brush up on your Latin before reading!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
For those who are not familiar with the author's work, or who have seen the film, this unabridged version may be a rather difficult listen.

The story is presented as a narration by Adso, an ageing Benedictine monk, who witnessed the events of the tale as a teenage novice many years before. It is set in the early fourteenth century at an unidentified monastery in the mountains of northern Italy. It is a superb mystery woven around the religious and political unrest of the time and is a commentary of the perverse and deadly bigotry of the Inquisition. Or maybe it's the other way around.......

This is one of the best mysteries I've ever read, but it is extremely hard going in places. The narrator does not help, as his voice, which I disliked intensely in the beginning but came to find appropriate for the prose of a mediaeval monk, makes the difficult passages even more of a chore to get through. I'm no fan of abridged audiobooks; I want to hear a book in the fullness intentended by the author so no under-plots, sub-plots or nuances are lost. However, I think that this book is one where a good abridged version would make for an easier listen. That said, I thoroughly enjoyed this book but would not recommend this unabridged version to the faint of heart.

Rosa Mundi Non Est

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I'm afraid I rather struggled with this audiobook. I think this particular style of book doesn't really translate very well into the audiobook format. Something about it made it very hard to follow, and I just kept losing concentration and missing bits. I wouldn't recommend it. You'd probably be better off reading this one.

Couldn't get on with it

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.