{"schema_version":"bf_book_companion_v1","release_id":"20260402T191500Z-bisacv2site-fullset","book":{"amazon_purchase_url":"https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01NARGQEU?tag=bookfrontier-20","asin":"B01NARGQEU","authors":["Laurent Binet","Sam Taylor"],"book_id":"9780374261566","canonical_url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9780374261566","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9780374261566.jpg?v=20260402T191500Z-bisacv2site-fullset%3A2026-04-05T10%3A13%3A18Z","description":"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 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, 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 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.","forthcoming":false,"isbn13":"9780374261566","publication_date":"20170801","publisher":"Farrar Straus & Giroux","slug":"the-seventh-function-of-language","subtitle":"A Novel","title":"The Seventh Function of Language"},"discovery":{"categories":{"all":[{"bisac_code":"LIT004150","confidence_band":"medium","label":"French Literary Criticism","score":0.7164,"source":"bisac_hint_model"},{"bisac_code":"LCO008020","confidence_band":"medium","label":"French Literary Collections","score":0.7042,"source":"bisac_hint_model"},{"bisac_code":"LIT024050","confidence_band":"medium","label":"20th-Century Literary Criticism","score":0.6849,"source":"bisac_hint_model"}],"hint":[{"bisac_code":"LIT004150","confidence_band":"medium","label":"French Literary Criticism","score":0.7164,"source":"bisac_hint_model"},{"bisac_code":"LCO008020","confidence_band":"medium","label":"French Literary Collections","score":0.7042,"source":"bisac_hint_model"},{"bisac_code":"LIT024050","confidence_band":"medium","label":"20th-Century Literary Criticism","score":0.6849,"source":"bisac_hint_model"}],"publisher":[{"bisac_code":"FIC016000","confidence_band":"high","label":"Funny Fiction","score":1,"source":"onix_publisher_code"},{"bisac_code":"FIC019000","confidence_band":"high","label":"Literary Fiction","score":1,"source":"onix_publisher_code"},{"bisac_code":"FIC022080","confidence_band":"high","label":"International Crime Fiction","score":1,"source":"onix_publisher_code"}]},"genres":[{"label":"French Literary Criticism","score":0.7164,"slug":"french-literary-criticism"},{"label":"French Literary Collections","score":0.7042,"slug":"french-literary-collections"},{"label":"20th-Century Literary Criticism","score":0.6849,"slug":"20th-century-literary-criticism"}],"reader_fit":["Good for readers who enjoy French Literary Criticism","Good for readers interested in literary","Good for readers who enjoy French Literary Criticism and French Literary Collections."],"related_lists":[],"series":null,"similar_books":[{"authors":["Raymond Queneau","Chris Clarke","Paul Fournel"],"book_id":"9781681377704","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9781681377704.jpg?v=20260402T191500Z-bisacv2site-fullset%3A2026-04-05T10%3A13%3A18Z","score":17.0348,"title":"The Skin of Dreams","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9781681377704"},{"authors":["Robert Zaretsky"],"book_id":"9780674970861","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9780674970861.jpg?v=20260402T191500Z-bisacv2site-fullset%3A2026-04-05T10%3A13%3A18Z","score":15.3687,"title":"Life Worth Living","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9780674970861"},{"authors":["E. 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