Interviewer

Have you read The Da Vinci Code?

Umberto Eco

Yes, I am guilty of that too.

Interviewer

That novel seems like a bizarre little offshoot of Foucault’s Pendulum.

Eco

The author, Dan Brown, is a character from Foucault’s Pendulum. I invented him. He shares my characters’ fascinations — the world conspiracy of Rosicrucians, Masons, and Jesuits. The role of the Knights Templar. The hermetic secret. The principle that everything is connected. I suspect Dan Brown might not even exist.

(From the Summer 2008 issue of Paris Review, No. 185, page 88 as interviewed by Lila Azam Zanganeh, a contributor to Le Monde. She has written a collection of essays on Iran entitled My Brother, Guard Your Eyes.)