S/Z

First UK edition, first printing. Publisher's original charcoal cloth, lettered in gilt to the spine. In the dustwrapper designed by Mon Mohan with Jerry Bauer's photograph of Barthes to the rear panel. Top edge coloured red. Double-page frontispiece of Girodet's 'Endymion Sleeping'. A very near fine copy, the binding square and firm, the contents clean throughout. Light offsetting to the front free endpaper and a few (barely visible) light spots to the fore-edge of the page block. Small rough patch to the outer lower edge of a handful of pages (a production issue, again barely noticeable). In the bright, clean dustwrapper, without fading or tears, just the merest rubbing to outer corners. Not price-clipped (£4.50 net to the front flap). A particularly sharp copy, uncommon thus.

One of the great works of twentieth-century literary criticism, Barthes' analysis of Balzac's little known novella, 'Sarrasine' (the text of which is included in an appendix) is anything but a dry, theoretical exercise. A distillation of Barthes's system of signs and symbols, the work patiently uncovers unsuspected networks and layers of meaning in Balzac's text. Barthes weaves his beguiling labyrinth with a sensuous relish and cool intelligence governed by pleasure: of writer and reader alike. In his prefatory note, Richard Howard describes 'S/Z' as "the most useful, the most intimate, and the most suggestive book I have ever read about why I have ever read a book. It is, by the way, useful, intimate, and suggestive about Balzac's tale 'Sarrasine', which the reader of the readerly will find reassembled at the end of this writerly book, 'en appendice', as the French say."