This slim book, of only 80 pages, takes you behind the scenes and into the mind of an author. It shows that a "real world" was created in "The name of the rose" with all of the history, geography and even weather in the proper place for the story to happen. The style is light and playful talking about how many steps are needed for some dialog to take place rather than explaining what each character's motivation is. It gives a glimpse of how much enjoyment must come from actually creating a novel