Critical Praise

"A gripping concoction of mystery, political intrigue, and adventure with generous doses of romance and comic relief.... Mr. Eco is a master storyteller. "

—The Baltimore Sun

"This is high art that has not forgotten its origins in the tale told around a campfire.... Eco gives us, as we rarely get it, the novel as comedy, as adventure tale, as romance, above all as wellspring of ideas. "

—Newsday

"As wonderfully exotic as only Eco can contrive, with his encyclopedic knowledge and his captivating storytelling skills. "

—San Francisco Chronicle

"Every age gets the classics it deserves. I hope we deserve The Island of the Day Before. If we do, we will not only know the pleasures of a profound and ingenious story artfully told but will experience Renaissance battles, love poems, and sea journeys in the age of exploration. Shipwrecked among archaic scientific nightmares and failed beginnings and dead ends of technology, we will recover the perennial hope of making sense of what happens to us. This novel belongs in the great tradition of the conte philosophique, like Swift's Gulliver's Travels, Johnson's Rasselas, and Voltaire's Candide. "

—The New York Times Book Review

"A masterpiece...intellectually stimulating and dramatically intriguing. "

—Chicago Tribune