Novel written by Italian author Umberto Eco. The under lying premise centers on the 17th century quest to discover a means of calculating the longitude, as it pertains to sailing. Of course, this being a work by Eco, the story involves the subtle and convoluted nature of time as it pieces together the story of a young man, Roberto della Griva, as he becomes the "only man in human history to have been shipwrecked and cast up upon a deserted ship."