The present study is a critical analysis of the novel "The Seventh Function of Language", signed by the French writer Laurent Binet and published at Grasset Publishing House in 2015. The version under review is an Italian translation of the novel, printed at the Milanese publishing house La nave di Teseo in 2018. Laurent Binet (1972) is a professor of literature at Saint-Denis University in Paris and has been awarded the Goncourt prize (2010) for his debut novel, "HHhH", in 2010. Right from the publishing, "The Seventh Function of Language" has provoked an ample and controversial public debate, due to its iconoclastic subject and to the characters celebrity. Eco, Derrida, Lacan, Foucault, Genette, Kristeva, Deleuze etc. are the protagonists of a literary and political thriller that decanonizes the cult era of postmodernist theories. One of the main purposes of the analysis is to examine the storytelling methods that make a novel to be a bestseller. The notion of "libertine reader", present in the title of this article, is proposed by the author to describe the paradigm of reading, interpretation and writing specific to Laurent Binet.