Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes

Highly original, extremely fertile and inventive, [Barthes] really does represent, in a peculiarly qualified way, a new kind of writing, and he continually discovers new ways of writing about writing... It is a remarkable book

Mark Kermode, New York Times Book Review

Though Barthes left behind disciples, there can be no replacing him; his brilliance had a wavelength all its own

John Updike

Anyone who saw [Barthes] as only the stern structuralist, dissecting signs, symbols and systems, must have missed the personal touches that would eventually burst into the open in his weird and wonderful "anti-autobiography" which begins with the announcement that its contents "must all be considered as if spoken by a character in a novel" and proceeds to jump from first to second to third person, accumulating scenes and lists and essay fragment

Telegraph