This time it is the chance death of the literary critic Ronald Barthes, who died in hospital after an unfortunate encounter in a Paris street with a laundry van. Photograph: Joel Saget/AFP/Getty ImagesĪgain Binet steals from fact. At the heart of a madcap narrative is the overwhelming acknowledgment of the power of language.ĭelphine de Vigan: ponderous saga on writer’s block. Much the same may be said of The 7th Function of Language, which is even funnier and more absurd, with equal measures of panache and daring. Admittedly, it is a dark story, and most of it is widely known, yet Binet's conversational tone sustains the yarn brilliantly, and Sam Taylor's translation conveys the pace and narrative bemusement. Binet is obviously clever, loves history and has a healthy disrespect for convention – always a useful quality in a novelist. Humour can open most doors – and can salvage even the craziest plot, as the French writer Laurent Binet demonstrates in the lively follow-up to his dextrous, Prix Goncourt-winning first novel, HHhH, from 2009.īased on the 1942 Operation Anthropoid plot to assassinate Reinhard Heydrich, the Nazi secret-service chief, HHhH is a terrific jaunt.
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