The Name of the Rose

In the year of our Lord 1327, during the last week of November, in a wealthy Cluniac monastery on the slopes of the Apennines: Brother William of Baskerville, a learned Franciscan from England, arrives as a special envoy of the Emperor on a delicate mission. He is to organize a highly political meeting between the heretical Menorites and representatives of the Pope. However, his stay at the monastery soon proves to be an apocalyptic time of terror: over the course of seven days and nights, William and his assistant Adson witness the most astonishing and deeply unsettling events for a monastery. One monk has drowned in a vat of pig's blood, another has jumped from a window because he could not bear the love of a fellow brother, and a third lies dead in the bathhouse. Rumors swirl through the monastery, and not only does the abbot have something to hide. Everywhere, pious cover-ups and concealers are at work. William, the former inquisitor, is seized by the fever of investigation.