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3.5 

The Seventh Function of Language

By Laurent Binet
The Seventh Function of Language by Laurent Binet digital book - Fable

Publisher Description

Paris, 1980. The literary critic Roland Barthes dies—struck by a laundry van—after lunch with the presidential candidate François Mitterand. The world of letters mourns a tragic accident. But what if it wasn't an accident at all? What if Barthes was . . . murdered? In , 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 Kristeva—as 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 ). Soon Bayard finds himself in search of a lost manuscript by the linguist Roman Jakobson on the mysterious "seventh function of language." A brilliantly erudite comedy, takes us from the cafés 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.

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The Seventh Function of Language Reviews

3.5
“A liberal arts thriller, like a Davinci Code written for a PHD level audience. Really nerdy, at times implausibly silly, but also fun.”
“Este libro se lee como examen con libreta abierta, and i'm all here for it.”

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