Туристический отдых. Отпуск.

Eco, who will be 80 in January, doesn't look too bad for his ordeal. His rotundity means he sits a little awkwardly in his chair, but he is a lively, playful interviewee, chewing on a small cigar throughout. He gave up smoking them eight years ago, but still likes to have one in his mouth and hopes some of the nicotine gets through. He has a rasping voice and an idiosyncratic take on English. The conversation occasionally breaks down when I use expressions he doesn't quite grasp. He misunderstands when I ask him whether The Prague Cemetery is, as some critics have suggested, a "return to form": for him, form is a sporting rather than a literary term.

Anyway, we battle on. The elephant in our cramped little room is that the new book is not a return to form, whether literary or sporting. Set in the second half of the 19th century and following the fortunes of master forger, murderer and general bad egg Simone Simonini, who manages to have a hand in most of the great events of that period (Italian unification, Franco-Prussian war, Paris Commune, Dreyfus affair), it is a wearying read. In English at least. Perhaps it sparkles in Italian.