Inventing the Enemy covers a wide range of topics on which Umberto Eco has written and lectured over the last ten years, from the discussion of ideas that have inspired his earlier novels - exploring lost islands, mythical realms, and the medieval world in the process - to a disquisition on the theme that runs through his most recent novel, The Prague Cemetery, that every country needs an enemy, and if it doesn't have one, must invent it. Eco's lively new collection examines topics as diverse as St Thomas Aquinas's notions about the soul of an unborn child, indignant reviews of James Joyce's Ulysses by fascist journalists of the 1920s and 1930s, censorship, violence and Wikileaks.

These are essays full of passion, curiosity, and obsessions by one of the world's most esteemed scholars and critically acclaimed, bestselling novelists.