William Weaver, prizewinning translator of Eco, Calvino and other Italians, dies at age 90

NEW YORK, N.Y. – William Weaver, one of the world’s most honoured and widely read translators who helped introduce English-language readers to the works of Umberto Eco, Italo Calvino and many other Italian writers, has died.

His nephew John Paulson says Weaver died Tuesday at a retirement home in Rhinebeck, N.Y. He was 90 and had been in poor health for years since suffering a stroke.

Eco’s “The Name of the Rose” was the most famous of Weaver’s translations. He also worked on Calvino’s “Invisible Cities” and “Mr. Palomar” and on Oriana Fallaci’s “A Man.” He won a National Book Award in 1969 for his translation of Calvino’s “Cosmicomics” and was the rare member of the elite American Academy of Arts and Letters voted in for his translations.