Italian literary giant Umberto Eco dies

Italy was in mourning yesterday following the death of Umberto Eco, the intellectual and literary giant who wrote "The Name of the Rose" and was cherished as one of his country's favourite sons. He was 84.

Eco, who had been suffering from cancer, passed away at his Milan home late on Friday.

Italian Prime Minister Matteo led tributes to the philosopher and semiotics lecturer who once famously described writing best-selling, heavyweight novels as "something I do at the weekends."

The Name of the Rose was made into a film in 1989 starring Scottish actor Sean Connery. Eco, who also wrote the novel Foucault's Pendulum, continued to publish new works, with Numero Zero released last year. He also wrote children's books and literary criticism.

In an interview with British daily The Guardian last year, the invariably bearded and bespectacled Eco said that his approach to writing was to seek to "change" the reader.

"I don't know what the reader expects," he said. "I think an author should write what the reader does not expect."

Eco founded the communications department at the University of San Marino in the 1980s. He was later professor emeritus and chairman of the Higher School of Humanities of the University of Bologna. Eco was born in Alessandria, northern Italy, in 1932.