Umberto Eco at work

The second part is an interview with Umberto Eco, by Mukund Padmanabhan of 'The Hindu'. Eco was an Italian professor at the University of Bologna, a scholar of semiotics (the study of signs), and also a writer of novels, children's books, essays and newspaper articles.

Mukund asks how he manages to do so many different things. Eco says that, in fact, he is always doing the same thing: following the same philosophical and moral interests, whether he writes a scholarly book, a children's story or a novel.

His 'secret', he says, is to use the empty spaces of the day, which he calls interstices. For example, while waiting for someone to come up in the lift, he can write an article. There is a lot of empty space in our lives and in the universe, and he uses it.

His scholarly writing is unusual: it is personal, almost like a story. He tells the story of his research, with its trials and mistakes, instead of just giving the results. That is why his academic books read like narratives.

He began writing novels late, at about fifty, almost by accident. He calls himself 'a professor who writes novels on Sundays', and he is a little bothered that most people now know him only as a novelist, not as an academic.