Creative Writing Reading Series
Laurent Binet
Thursday 9 February 2017
6.30pm at Reid Hall, in the Salle de Conférence
4 rue de Chevreuse, Montparnasse, Paris 75006
All welcome.
Award-winner French author Laurent Binet will be reading from and talking about his book ‘The 7th function of language’ (2015), a story about Roland Barthes and the power of language. Binet’s novel starts with Barthes’ death, and assumes the death is an assassination. In the political and intellectual world of the time, everyone is a suspect…
“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 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.” – Macmillan Publishers
Laurent Binet was born in Paris. His first novel, ‘HHhH’, was named one of the fifty best books of 2015 by The New York Times and received the Prix Goncourt du Premier Roman. He is a professor at the University of Paris III, where he lectures on French literature.