reading a wonderful novel

i have been reading a wonderful novel by umberto eco called the island of the day before...

now reading between the lines, i would venture to suggest he had discovered something very like a fig.

none of those flowers or those fruits was known to him; each seemed generated by the fancy of a painter who had wanted to violate the laws of nature and invent convincing absurdities, riven delights and sapid falsehoods: such as that corolla covered with a whitish fuzz that blossomed into a tuft of violet feathers, but no, it was a faded primrose that extruded an obscene appendage, or a mask that covered a hoary visage with goat's beards. who could have conceived this bush, its leaves dark green on one side, with wild red-yellow decorations, and the other side flaming, surrounded by other leaves of the most tender pea-green, of meaty consistency, conch-shaped to hold the water of the latest rain?

p 39

much of the language of this author is truly extraordinary... and this is, so far, a great tale...