Description

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Is there any such thing as revolutionary literature? Can literature, in fact, be political at all? These are the questions Roland Barthes addresses in Writing Degree Zero, his first published book and a landmark in his oeuvre. The debate had engaged the European literary community since the 1930s; with this fierce manifesto, Barthes challenged the notion of literature's obligation to be socially committed. Yes, Barthes allows, the writer has a political and ethical responsibility. But the history of French literature shows that the writer has often failed to meet it—and from Barthes's perspective, literature is committed to little more than the myth of itself. Expert and uncompromising, Writing Degree Zero introduced the themes that would soon establish Barthes as one of the leading voices in literary criticism.

About the Author

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Roland Barthes (1915-1980) was a French cultural and literary critic, whose clever and lyrical writings on semiotics made structuralism one of the leading movements of the twentieth century. Barthes had a cult following and published seventeen books, including Camera Lucida, Mythologies, and A Lover's Discourse.

Adam Thirlwell was born in London in 1978. He is the author of the novels Politics and The Escape; the novella Kapow!; a project about international novels, The Delighted States, which won a Somerset Maugham Award; and of a compendium of translations edited for McSweeney’s. He has twice been selected as one of Granta’s Best Young Novelists. His work has been translated into thirty languages. He lives in London.

Praise For…

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“You need to read this book, this strange book: Writing Degree Zero. You need to be defeated by it. And then you need (like Barthes) to begin a revolution.” —Adam Thirlwell, from his foreword

“A sweeping account of French literature.” —Kenneth R. Weinstein, The Washington Times

“Barthes's myths about literature are extremely talented, even masterful . . . They acknowledge basic antinomies that even the most gifted minds addressing the same subject, such as Sartre, have glossed over.” —Susan Sontag