The Seventh Function of Language: A Novel

From the prizewinning author of HHhH, ôthe most insolent novel of the yearö (LÆExpress) is a romp through the French intelligentsia of the twentieth century. Paris, 1980. The literary critic Roland Barthes diesùstruck by a laundry vanùafter lunch with the presidential candidate Fran?ois Mitterand. The world of letters mourns a tragic accident. But what if it wasnÆt an accident at all? What if Barthes was . . . murdered? In The Seventh Function of Language, Laurent Binet spins a madcap secret history of the French intelligentsia, starring such luminaries as Jacques Derrida, Umberto Eco, Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, and Julia Kristevaùas well as the hapless police detective Jacques Bayard, whose new case will plunge him into the depths of literary theory (starting with the French version of Roland Barthes for Dummies). Soon Bayard finds himself in search of a lost manuscript by the linguist Roman Jakobson on the mysterious ôseventh function of language.ö A brilliantly erudite comedy with more than a dash of The Da Vinci CodeùThe Seventh Function of Language takes us from the caf?s of Saint-Germain to the corridors of Cornell University, and into the duels and orgies of the Logos Club, a secret philosophical society that dates to the Roman Empire. Binet has written both a send-up and a wildly exuberant celebration of the French intellectual tradition.

• | Author: Laurent Binet
• | Publisher: Picador
• | Publication Date: Aug 14, 2018
• | Number of Pages: 368 pages
• | Language: English
• | Binding: Paperback/Fiction
• | ISBN-10: 1250181682
• | ISBN-13: 9781250181688