Q. Your new book begins with a falsehood that has endured to the present: That people in the Middle Ages thought the earth was flat.

A. Yes, and even cultivated people still repeat it to this day. The official culture in the Middle Ages was absolutely convinced that the earth was spherical and they accepted the Greek idea of the measure of the equator. It’s just intellectual and cultural laziness. We are also continuously told that during the Middle Ages they burned witches, when the real burning of witches started in the Renaissance.

Q. What are you at work on now?

A. I am in turmoil over a very complex story. In the States, they publish an enormous collection of books called “The Library of Living Philosophers.” It started with John Dewey and Bertrand Russell and the last book was about Richard Rorty. For mysterious reasons — probably because there is nobody else is around — they chose me for the next one. These are books of 1,500 pages. I am supposed to write 100 pages of philosophical autobiography. And there are 25 people, working at this moment, each writing a paper on my philosophical activity. And I am supposed to read all of them and to respond to each of them with at least three or four pages each. I think I have two years to work on it, and I am hoping to die before I have to do it.

Q. Are you skeptical about all the reports about the decline of Italian culture?

A. What decline? There is me! [Laughs] I think that nobody is able to evaluate the period in which he or she lives. I think when Joyce was publishing his first book there were a lot of people in Ireland saying Irish culture is in complete decline. The one who will be considered the greatest writer of the 21st century is in this moment alive but we don’t recognize him.

Q. You’ve said that the detective novel is a barometer of narrative production in any country. By that metric, where does Italy rank?