Mourning Diary: October 26, 1977 - September 15, 1979 - Paperback

by Roland Barthes (Author), Richard Howard (Translator), Richard Howard (Afterword by)

"In the sentence 'She's no longer suffering, ' to what, to whom does 'she' refer? What does that present tense mean?" --Roland Barthes, from his diary

The day after his mother's death in October 1977, Roland Barthes began a diary of mourning. For nearly two years, the legendary French theorist wrote about a solitude new to him; about the ebb and flow of sadness; about the slow pace of mourning, and life reclaimed through writing. Named a Top 10 Book of 2010 by The New York Times and one of the Best Books of 2010 by Slate and The Times Literary Supplement, Mourning Diary is a major discovery in Roland Barthes's work: a skeleton key to the themes he tackled throughout his life, as well as a unique study of grief--intimate, deeply moving, and universal.

Author Biography

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.