Laurent Binet

I februari 1980 blir den kände litteraturforskaren Roland Barthes påkörd i Paris när han korsar gatan efter en lunch hos president Mitterrand. En månad senare avlider han i sviterna efter olyckan. Men tänk om det inte var en olycka? Tänk om Barthes bar på en hemlighet så stor att någon beslöt sig för att…mörda honom? Laurent Binet har skrivit en filosofisk detektivgåta, som med finess och humor tar med läsaren på ett intellektuellt äventyr genom Frankrikes kulturella och politiska elit.

From the prizewinning author of HHhH, "the most insolent novel of the year" (L'Express) comes 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 Fran ois 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, 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 Roland Barthes for Dummies). 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, The Seventh Function of Language takes us from the caf s 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.

'One of the funniest, most riotously inventive and enjoyable novels youâ??ll read this year' - ObserverRoland Barthes is knocked down in a Paris street by a laundry van.

Navet i Laurent Binets intrikata dokumentärroman HHhH är ett av andra världskrigets mest omskrivna attentat, det mot Reinhard Heydrich, riksprotektor i Böhmen-Mähren och chef för Rikssäkerhets­överstyrelsen, i Prag 27 maj 1942. Två män från den tjeckoslovakiska exilarmén angriper den bil Heyd­rich färdades i. Men angreppet, med en kulspruta och en modifierad pansarvärnsgranat, går inte riktigt som motståndsmännen har tänkt sig.

"Captivating . . . HHhH] has a vitality very different from that of most historical fiction." --James Wood, The New YorkerThe basis for the major motion picture, "The Man with the Iron Heart " available on streaming and home video. HHhH: "Himmlers Hirn heisst Heydrich," or "Himmler's brain is called Heydrich." The most lethal man in Hitler's cabinet, Reinhard Heydrich seemed indestructible--until two exiled operatives, a Slovak and a Czech, killed him and changed the course of history. In Laurent Binet's mesmerizing debut, we follow Jozef Gabc k and Jan Kubis from their dramatic escape from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia to their fatal attack on Heydrich and their own brutal deaths in the basement of a Prague church. A seamless blend of memory, actuality, and Binet's own remarkable imagination, HHhH is at once thrilling and intellectually engrossing--a fast-paced novel of the Second World War that is also a profound meditation on the debt we owe to history. A Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for FictionA Financial Times Best Book of the YearA New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice

This is Operation Anthropoid, Prague, 1942: two Czechoslovakian parachutists sent on a daring mission by London to assassinate Reinhard Heydrich - chief of the Nazi secret services, 'the hangman of Prague', 'the blond beast', 'the most dangerous man in the Third Reich'.