'One of the funniest, most riotously inventive and enjoyable novels you’ll read this year' - Observer
Roland Barthes is knocked down in a Paris street by a laundry van. It’s February 1980 and he has just come from lunch with Francois Mitterrand. Barthes dies soon afterwards. History tells us it was an accident.
But what if it were an assassination? What if Barthes was carrying a document of unbelievable, global importance? A document explaining the seventh function of language – an idea so powerful it gives whoever masters it the ability to convince anyone, in any situation, to do anything.
Police Captain Jacques Bayard and his reluctant accomplice Simon Herzog set off on a chase that takes them from the corridors of power to backstreet saunas and midnight meetings. What they discover is a worldwide conspiracy involving the President, murderous Bulgarians and a secret international debating society.
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Imprint: Vintage Digital
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Published: 04/05/2017
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ISBN: 9781473524637
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Length: 400 Pages
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RRP: £8.99
Reviews
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Establishes Laurent Binet as the clear heir to the late Umberto Eco, writing novels that are both brilliant and playful, dense with ideas while never losing sight of their need to entertain... One of the funniest, most riotously inventive and enjoyable novels you’ll read this year
Alex Preston, Observer
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A hugely entertaining novel, taking delight in its own twists and turns
Nicholas Lezard, Spectator
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Lively, earthy, experimental, ambitious, clever and endlessly entertaining… Smart, witty, direct, cool
Hal Jensen, The Times Literary Supplement
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The premise is a stroke of genius. Roland Barthes did not die following an accident in 1980; he was murdered… The strands of the plot are skilfully interwoven through a dual process of fictionalisation of the real and realisation of the fictional
Andrew Gallix, Financial Times
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An almost filmic detective romp, taking in glamorous international locations, killer dogs, Bulgarian secret agents, several varieties of sex and wild car chases
Andrew Hussey, Literary Review
