Paris in the spring of 1980: after a dinner with presidential candidate François Mitterand, philosopher Roland Barthes is run over by a Bulgarian laundry delivery man. The manuscript he was carrying disappears without a trace. A passer-by, Michael Foucault, also a philosopher, witnesses the accident and claims it was murder. Inspector Bayard feels overwhelmed and hires the young linguist Herzog as his assistant. The latter develops his skills in deciphering signs. But he begins to doubt whether all this is happening in reality, or whether it is not rather a novel.
In a light-footed language rich in allusions and under the cloak of a detective novel, the Parisian intellectual milieu of the eighties is parodied and set right. The Seventh Language Function (Rowohlt) is the second novel by Parisian Laurent Binet.
Moderator: Michael Hohmann. German voice: Ellen Schulz.
In collaboration with the Institut franco-allemand IFRA / Institut français.
Text source and further information about this event:
http://www.romanfabrik.de/programm/detailansicht/calendar/2017/04/26/event/tx_cal_phpicalendar/laurent-binet/
