Andrew Hussey
Death of an Author
The 7th Function of Language
By Laurent Binet (Translated by Sam Taylor)
Harvill Secker 390pp £16.99 order from our bookshop
This book begins with a real event that took place on rue des Ecoles in Paris on 25 February 1980 at around half past three in the afternoon. After a good lunch, the distinguished philosopher and critic Roland Barthes was on his way back to his office when he walked into the path of a laundry van. He was severely injured and taken to the nearby hospital of Pitié-Salpêtrière, where he died a month later. He was sixty-four years old and still at the height of his powers and fame. The commonly accepted opinion was that he had been the victim of a random accident.
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