Atomised

Literature & Fiction

Michel Houellebecq

Contemporary

Vintage

Map & Territory

Literary

Vintage Books

Michel Renault is a human void. Following the death of the father he barely knew, he endures his civil ser- vice job while eking out an existence of prepackaged pleasure, hollow friendships, TV dinners, and pornography. On a group holiday in Thailand, however, he meets the shyly compelling Valérie, who soon pursues an agenda that Michel himself could never have thought possible: his own humanization. Back in Paris, they plunge into an affair that strays into S&amp;M, public sex, and partner swapping, even as they devise a scheme to save Valérie’s ailing travel company by capitalizing on the only trade Michel has seen flourish in the Third World. Before long, he quits his job, and their business model for “sex tourism” is gradually implemented. But when they return to Thailand, where Michel’s philosophy will be put into practice, he discovers that sex is neither the most consuming nor dangerous of passions . . . From a suburbanized West crippled by hate crime to an East subsumed by materialism, Michel Houellebecq explores—with characteristic provocativeness, but also with surprising tenderness—the emotions that seem most resilient to any influence: love and hate. Platform is, as Anita Brookner has written, “a brilliant novel, casting a prescient eye on the abuses and inequalities that lead to wider trouble.”

Platform

Frank Wynne

KNOPF

An international literary phenomenon, The Elementary Particles is a frighteningly original novel–part Marguerite Duras and part Bret Easton Ellis-that leaps headlong into the malaise of contemporary existence. Bruno and Michel are half-brothers abandoned by their mother, an unabashed devotee of the drugged-out free-love world of the sixties. Bruno, the older, has become a raucously promiscuous hedonist himself, while Michel is an emotionally dead molecular biologist wholly immersed in the solitude of his work. Each is ultimately offered a final chance at genuine love, and what unfolds is a brilliantly caustic and unpredictable tale. Translated from the French by Frank Wynne.

The Elementary Particles

Half-brothers Michel and Bruno have a mother in common, but little else. In this bilious and darkly funny dissection of modern lives and loves, the brothers are symptomatic members of an atomised society.

Heinemann

The most celebrated and controversial French novelist of our time now delivers his magnum opusâabout art and money, love and friendship and death, fathers and sons. Â  The Map and the Territory is the story of an artist, Jed Martin, and his family and lovers and friends, the arc of his entire history rendered with sharp humor and powerful compassion. His earliest photographs, of countless industrial objects, were followed by a surprisingly successful series featuring Michelin road maps, which also happened to bring him the love of his life, Olga, a beautiful Russian workingâfor a timeâin Paris. But global fame and fortune arrive when he turns to painting and produces a host of portraits that capture a wide range of professions, from the commonplace (the owner of a local bar) to the autobiographical (his father, an accomplished architect) and from the celebrated (Bill Gates and Steve Jobs Discussing the Future of Information Technology) to the literary (a writer named Houellebecq, with whom he develops an unusually close relationship).  Â  Then, while his aging father (his only living relative) flirts with oblivion, a police inspector seeks Martin’s help in solving an unspeakably gruesome crimeâevents that prove profoundly unsettling. Even so, now growing old himself, Jed Martin somehow discovers serenity and manages to add another startling chapter to his artistic legacy, a deeply moving conclusion to this saga of hopes and losses and dreams.

Map & the Territory

Random House Export

From the notorious, bestselling author of ATOMISED: a scholarly love letter on the hugely influential and reclusive literary horror writer H.P. Lovecraft
'Those who love life do not read. Nor do they go to the movies, actually. No matter what might be said, access to the artistic universe is more or less entirely the preserve of those who are a little fed up with the world.'
In this prescient work, now with an introduction by Stephen King, Michel Houellebecq, the controversial and bestselling author of ATOMISED, focuses his considerable analytical skills on H.P. Lovecraft - one of the seminal horror writers of the early 20th century. Houellebecq's insights into the craft of writing illuminate both Lovecraft and Houellebecq's own work. The two are kindred spirits, sharing a uniquely dark worldview. But even as he outlines Lovecraft's rejection of this loathsome world, it is Houellebecq's adulation for the author that drives this work and makes it a love song, infusing the writing with an energy and passion that characterises Houellebecq's new novel. This is indispensable reading for anyone interested in Lovecraft, Houellebecq, or the past and future of horror.

H. P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life

History & Criticism

Gollancz

The Possibility of an Island

Orion Publishing Group

Annihilation

Picador

Pan/Macmillan

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Michel Houellebecq. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Michel Houellebecq