*Writing Degree Zero* (1953) is Roland Barthes’s first full-length book; it grew out of magazine articles from the 1940s and was written under the influence of Jean-Paul Sartre’s essay *What Is Literature?*. In this text—foundational to his later work—Barthes distinguishes between language and style and defines the concept of "writing" while tracing its evolution; he also proposes the idea of ​​"neutral writing"—or "writing degree zero"—which transcends literature as a bourgeois cultural form. The work became a manifesto for the *Nouveau Roman* (New Novel) era and heralded the structuralist revolution of the 1960s. In 1999, it was included in the list of the 100 best books of the 20th century compiled by the newspaper *Le Monde*.