Eco's recondite fiction seems to have ' little to do with social concerns, as most would define the term. He writes of characters and issues apparently remote; yet it would require no great ingenuity to find many comments directly relating to contemporary problems in The Island of the Day Before. Eco examines the literary and philosophical issues that interest him, no doubt reasoning that questions as to how we perceive the world and how we communicate with one another are even more fundamental than economics or politics.