من تصميم Michel Houellebecq
A Daily Express Best Book of the Year
'An extended meditation on human frailty and the lack of spirituality in the Western world . . . Houellebecq displays compassion and empathy, and a belief in the redemptive power of love.' – New Statesman
'The most important novelist to have been publishing in all of Europe over the past three decades' – The Sunday Times
It is 2027. France is in a state of economic decline and moral decay.
As the country plunges into a closely-fought presidential campaign, the French state falls victim to a series of mysterious and unsettling cyberattacks. The sophisticated nature of the attacks leaves the best computer scientists at the DGSI – the French counter-terrorism agency – scrambling for answers.
An advisor to the country's Finance Minister, Paul Raison is close to the heart of government. His wife Prudence is a Treasury official, while his father Édouard, now retired, has spent his career working for the DGSI. When Édouard has a stroke, his children have an opportunity to repair their strained relationships, as they determine to free their father from the medical centre where he is wasting away.
Michel Houellebecq's Annihilation reveals new sides to his writing, adding compassion and tenderness to the emotions of rage and irony that have powered both him and his earlier works to international fame.
'We have no one to match Houellebecq.' – The Daily Telegraph
Translated from the French by Shaun Whiteside
Annihilation was a #1 Livres Hebdo bestseller in France w/c 10/01/2022, and a #1 Spiegel bestseller in Germany w/c 24/01/2022
A Daily Express Best Book of the Year
'An extended meditation on human frailty and the lack of spirituality in the Western world . . . Houellebecq displays compassion and empathy, and a belief in the redemptive power of love.' – New Statesman
'The most important novelist to have been publishing in all of Europe over the past three decades' – The Sunday Times
It is 2027. France is in a state of economic decline and moral decay.
As the country plunges into a closely-fought presidential campaign, the French state falls victim to a series of mysterious and unsettling cyberattacks. The sophisticated nature of the attacks leaves the best computer scientists at the DGSI – the French counter-terrorism agency – scrambling for answers.
An advisor to the country's Finance Minister, Paul Raison is close to the heart of government. His wife Prudence is a Treasury official, while his father Édouard, now retired, has spent his career working for the DGSI. When Édouard has a stroke, his children have an opportunity to repair their strained relationships, as they determine to free their father from the medical centre where he is wasting away.
Michel Houellebecq's Annihilation reveals new sides to his writing, adding compassion and tenderness to the emotions of rage and irony that have powered both him and his earlier works to international fame.
'We have no one to match Houellebecq.' – The Daily Telegraph
Translated from the French by Shaun Whiteside
Annihilation was a #1 Livres Hebdo bestseller in France w/c 10/01/2022, and a #1 Spiegel bestseller in Germany w/c 24/01/2022
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September 2, 2024
Houellebecq (Submission) wraps a ponderous family drama around a plodding near-future political thriller. It’s November 2026 and Paris has been rocked by a series of mysterious cyberattacks and disturbing deepfake videos, including an apparent decapitation of France’s finance minister, Bruno Juge. Paul Raison, 49, works closely with Bruno, and becomes privy to his scheme to be France’s next president following a “post-democracy” constitutional change. When Paul’s father, Édouard, a retired French intelligence agent, has a stroke and slips into a coma, Paul rushes from Paris to his hometown along with his devoutly Catholic sister, Cécile, and their younger brother, Aurélien. Paul, whose marriage to Prudence, a Wiccan, has been sexless and moribund for years, grapples with family squabbles and conspires with his siblings to kidnap Édouard from the hospital over concerns about his care. On the eve of an election where the far-right candidate is performing surprisingly well against Bruno’s party, a terror attack on a migrant boat upends French politics. There’s some stimulating philosophizing about the limits of representative government, and critics of religion will appreciate the excoriating depictions of Cécile’s and Prudence’s beliefs, but Houellebecq neglects to tie together or even resolve the novel’s main threads. This ambitious outing topples under its own weight.
