Foyles
Courtesy of our friends at Vintage, here’s Laurent Binet talking about his new novel The 7th Function of Language—a literary conspiracy thriller set across the intellectual milieu of 1980s Europe.
Having won the Prix Goncourt du Premier Roman for his debut novel HHhH, which recounts Operation Anthropoid, the assassination of Nazi leader Reinhard Heydrich during WW2, Binet is no stranger to reimagining the past. Now, in The 7th Function of Language, the author tackles the death in 1980 of semiotician and literary critic Roland Barthes, who was hit by a laundry van after meeting with then-Presidential hopeful François Mitterand.
Barthes—famed for his essay The Death of the Author—is reimagined as the absent centre of a sprawling conspiracy that takes the reader across the global power plays of the early eighties, and includes among its cast of characters such luminaries as Michel Foucault, Julia Kristeva and Umberto Eco—all in pursuit of a document that may uncover the titular seventh function of language.
Here Binet discusses what drew him to this setting, talking about the power of words and how history he fictionalises links to our modern-day political landscape. He also talks about meeting the late, great semiotician and novelist Umberto Eco, and how he felt about being a character in Binet’s book.
The 7th Function of Language is translated by Sam Taylor, and is published in the UK on 4th May 2017.
For more about the book and to buy, visit http://www.foyles.co.uk/witem/fiction-poetry/the-7th-function-of-language,laurent-binet-sam-taylor-9781784703196
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I think I am one of the few to read this book yet. It was very challenging to go through till the end.
First of all because you must know in advance the works and philosophy of the characters therein.
But finally you understand that the 7th function of language is the ability of using words to persuade
(a jury) and win a verbal confrontation.