The Seventh Function of Language, Laurent Binet
The Seventh Function of Language, Laurent Binet
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The Seventh Function of Language

Author: Laurent Binet, Sam Taylor

Narrator: Bronson Pinchot

Unabridged: 12 hr 27 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 08/01/2017

Synopsis

From the prizewinning author of HHhH comes The Seventh Function of Language, a romp through the French intelligentsia of the twentieth century.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 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, and Julia Kristeva―as well as the hapless police detective Jacques Bayard, whose new case will plunge him into the depths of literary theory. 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 that recalls Flaubert’s Parrot and The Name of the Rose―with more than a dash of The Da Vinci Code—The Seventh Function of Language takes us from the cafés of Paris to the corridors of Cornell University and into the duels and orgies of the Logos Club, a secret philosophical society that dates to the era of the Roman Empire. Binet has written both a send-up and a wildly exuberant celebration of the French intellectual tradition.

About Laurent Binet

Laurent Binet was born in Paris in 1972. He is the author the debut novel HHhH, which won the Prix Goncourt du Premier Roman and was named one of the fifty best books of 2015 by the New York Times. His memoir, La Vie professionnelle de Laurent B., tells of his experience teaching in secondary schools in Paris. He is a professor at the University of Paris III, where he lectures on French literature.

About Sam Taylor

Sam Taylor has written for The Guardian, Financial Times, Vogue and Esquire, and has translated such works as the award-winning HHhH by Laurent Binet, and the internationally-bestselling The Truth about the Harry Quebert Affair by Joël Dicker.

About Bronson Pinchot

Bronson Pinchot, Audible's 2010 Narrator of the Year, has won Publishers Weekly Listen-Up Awards, AudioFile Earphones Awards, Audible's Book of the Year Award, and Audie Awards for recent audiobooks, including Matterhorn, Wise Blood, Occupied City, and The Learners. A magna cum laude graduate of Yale, he is an Emmy- and People's Choice-nominated veteran of movies, television, and Broadway and West End shows. His performance of Malvolio in Twelfth Night was named the highlight of the entire two-year Kennedy Center Shakespeare Festival by the Washington Post.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Violet on September 02, 2021

We all spend important moments of our lives trying to argue our truth into consequence against an opponent, as if language has a magical persuading power. Roland Barthes was struck by a laundry van while crossing a road and died of his injuries a few weeks later. Laurent Binet creates a pastiched co......more

Goodreads review by Jonfaith on November 17, 2023

11.17.23: second reading I likely enjoyed the encounter more the second time, which is unexpected, nearly off-putting. It is a fantasy of real (for the most part) ideas in the historical period of 1980. There’s a vertigo in looking back and weighing the time to our own, while simultaneously understa......more

Goodreads review by Meike on November 19, 2019

Okay, I have to give Binet 5 stars for writing a book full to the brim with ideas, in which every sentence contains at least one thought, and that manages to be all kinds of contradictory things at once: High-brow and low-brow, noir murder mystery and comedy, social analysis and satire, pulp and lin......more

Goodreads review by Philippe on September 05, 2015

French intelligentsia hate this book. It is a good sign. Roland Barthes is dead. Murder? Perhaps. Who killed barthes who had discovered the 7th language function, able to give the power. It is an improbable thriller, Tintin at the structuralists. We meet Foucault in the gay backrooms, Sollers, Krist......more

Goodreads review by Katia on June 19, 2018

What it is? It is a mixture of a thriller with the tour de force of linguistics and literary theories. Binet picked up the year 1980, took real famous people and real events and has built a fictional plot around them. He also created two main fictional characters for the connection between his plot......more

Quotes

“This ‘Dan Brown style’ thriller is delivered with a decided wink…The audio shines…Narrator Bronson Pinchot revels in the novel’s absurdist mix. In one memorable scene, his characters deliver esoteric exposition against the increasingly disruptive backdrop of other characters who are engaged in less academic activities.” AudioFile

“At once a buddy-cop plot, a fish-out-of-water comedy, and a spy thriller…[with] amusing, sometimes scabrous, satirical portraiture of illustrious figures…Knowing, antic, amusingly disrespectful, and increasingly zany as it goes on.” New York Times

“The most outrageously entertaining novel of the year, a defamatory fantasy about the supposed secret lives of eminent post-structuralists. A joy.” Guardian (London)

“An intellectual thriller that will be catnip to serious readers…There’s so much fun to be had in The Seventh Function of Language, compellingly brought into English by Sam Taylor. Foucault, and Sollers, in particular, come across as wildly comic figures.” Washington Post

“An affectionate send-up of an Umberto Eco–style intellectual thriller that doubles as an exemplar of the genre, filled with suspense, elaborate conspiracies, and exotic locales.” Esquire

“A rollicking crime caper…It had me rolling on the floor of the Paris Metro when I read it.” Observer (London)

“A charming roman à clef like no other…A brilliant illustration of the possibilities left to the modern novel.” Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“It gets bloody, it gets erotic, and the depiction of some real-life characters is spicily shocking. Sensational fun for the intellectually astute.” Library Journal (starred review)

“Binet doesn’t just use the history of semiotics to gild a predictable thriller with intellectual pretension. He instead draws out the sometimes conspiratorial implications of using literary techniques to interpret everyday life. What if everything really does mean something?” BuzzFeed

“At once a mystery and a satire of mysteries…A clever and surprisingly action-packed attempt to merge abstruse theory and crime drama.” Kirkus Reviews

Awards

  • The Observer (UK) Books of the Year
  • New York Times Pick
  • Publishers Weekly Best Books of the Year
  • Guardian Best Book of the Year
  • NPR Best Book
  • Man Booker International Prize
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