“Having been shelved so close to the window for so long – for some fourteen years now, since I am fairly sure I bought the book the year Seuil first published it –, the spine, if not the cover of the book itself, had been bleached by the sun, turning its original deep dark red into something closer to mud-pink, the colour of unbaked clay.” – Kate Briggs, translator of the English edition of Roland Barthes’ The Preparation of the Novel.
