the Island of the day of before ( insulated It LED giorno PRIMA ) is a Historical novel of Umberto Eco published in 1994 (translated into French in 1996) which takes seat at the 17th century into full Pacific Ocean.

Subject

It puts in Roberto scene of the Thrush, a young person spy with the services of Mazarin which embarked on a ship Dutch. After the shipwreck of this vessel, it finds refuge on a boat abandoned and anchored not far from an island. This island is located on a very particular Méridien: the Date-line.

Prisoner of this ship because it cannot swim, Roberto of the Thrush speaks then about his so fertile time in ideas, personalities and wars. With him, the reader becomes aware of the one of the crucial problems of the time for navigation, the determination of the Longitude. Among the personalities which Roberto meets, some are directly named and identifiable (Mazarin, Colbert…), but Umberto Eco is also liked to dissimulate other characters. Thus, the character of Saint-Savin, that Roberto meets during the seat of Casal, at the time of the Guerre of Thirty Years, it is inspired by Savinien Cyrano of Bergerac, author of the States and Empire of the Moon , whose Saint-Savin utters almost word for word a passage. Umberto Eco also evokes without naming it Blaise Pascal under the features of an young man projecting to manufacture a machine able to carry out arithmetic calculations and being interested in experiments on the vacuum.