In 1643, Roberto della Griva is shipwrecked.

Well, not quite. He actually remains aboard an abandoned vessel anchored within sight of an island, one he cannot reach. The island lies across the international date line, seemingly not merely elsewhere but yesterday. Stranded between ship and shore, present and past, Roberto reconstructs his life through letters: war, courtly love, scientific argument, religious intrigue and his lifelong rivalry with a possibly imaginary brother.

Eco uses this splendidly artificial predicament to stage the seventeenth century’s confrontation with a newly measurable universe. Longitude becomes both scientific problem and metaphysical torment; clocks, maps, astronomy and experiments promise to make the world legible, while language and desire keep manufacturing alternate realities. The result is historical fiction as intellectual labyrinth—part maritime adventure, part philosophical comedy, part romance conducted under the increasingly hostile supervision of time itself.

Originally published in Italian as L’isola del giorno prima and translated by William Weaver, the novel is dense, playful and magnificently overbuilt. It is Eco being if you can imagine it, even more baroque: packed with obsolete theories, invented memories, theological disputes and machines designed to capture what may not exist. For readers who prefer novels that do not merely tell a story but construct an entire apparatus and then strand a man inside it.

Secker & Warburg, 1995; first UK edition and first Australian printing. Hardcover in dust jacket. Jacket rubbed and scratched with light edge and corner wear; internally clean.