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|title=Inventing the Enemy: Essays on Everything

|author=Umberto Eco

|publisher=Vintage

|date=September 2013

|website=http://www.umbertoeco.com/en/

|summary=Inventing the Enemy covers a huge variety of topics on which Umberto Eco has pronounced over the last ten years, from the discussion of ideas that have inspired his earlier novels like The Name of the Rose and Foucault's Pendulum.

}}

Imagine a sumptuous Italian feast in the sunlit-bathed ancient countryside near Milan. Next to you a gentleman talks and eats with furious energy. He tells of Dante, Cicero, and St Augustine and quotes a multitude of obscure troubadours from the Middle Ages. He repeats himself, gestures flamboyantly, nudges you sharply in the ribs, belches and even breaks wind. His conversation contains nuggets of information but in the flow of his discourse there is a fondness for iteration and reiteration. He throws bones over his shoulder and when he reaches the cheese course - definitely too much information on the mouldy bacteria! When you finally get up things the elderly gentleman has said prompt your imagination. You are better informed, intrigued and prodded to examine his discourse again and again, even if only to challenge what you have heard. Such are the effects of reading Eco’s essays in ''Inventing the Enemy''.