Books by Michel Houellebecq and Complete Book Reviews
Michel Houellebecq, Author , trans. from the French by Frank Wynne. Knopf $25 (272p) ISBN 978-0-375-41462-6
Controversially and unsuccessfully charged in France under hate crimes laws, Houellebecq insinuates anti-Islamic themes ("Every time that I heard that a Palestinian terrorist, or... a pregnant Palestinian woman, had been gunned down in the Gaza...
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Michel Houellebecq, Author Alfred A. Knopf $25 (272p) ISBN 978-0-375-40770-3
Houellebecq's controversial novel, which caused an uproar in France last year, finally reaches our shores. Whether it will make similar waves here remains to be seen, but its coolly didactic themes and schematic characterizations keep it from...
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Michel Houellebecq, Author, Gavin Bowd, Translator , trans. from the French by Gavin Bowd. Knopf $24.95 (337p) ISBN 978-0-307-26349-0
Like the New Age camp of The Elementary Particles
and the Thai sex tourist hotels of Platform
, Houellebecq's latest novel has a self-enclosed setting: the shifting sites at which the Elohimites, a UFO/cloning cult, hold their seminars. Daniel,
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Michel Houellebecq, translated from the French by Gavin Bowd. Knopf, $26.95 (288p) ISBN 978-0-307-70155-8
In his partly satirical new novel (after The Possibility of an Island), Houellebecq takes on the contemporary art world and the role of the artist. The book follows the sensational career of Jed Martin, an emotionally stunted Parisian art...
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Michel Houellebecq, Author, Paul Hammond, Translator Serpent's Tail $14.99 (160p) ISBN 978-1-85242-584-5
The unnamed narrator of Houellebecq's novel is Marcuse's one-dimensional man. A single, 30-year-old computer engineer in Paris with no sex life, he suffers from a chronic passivity that, in Houellebecq's view, is characteristic of Generation X. He...
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Michel Houellebecq, trans. from the French by Lorin Stein. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $26 (256p) ISBN 978-0-374-27157-2
It’s hard to overstate the controversy that has hounded Houellebecq’s Submission since its publication in France—which coincided with the attacks on the office of Charlie Hebdo—and the persistent accusations of Islamophobia might well color the...
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Bernard-Henri Lévy and Michel Houellebecq, trans. from the French by Miriam Frendo and Frank Wyne, Random, $17 trade paper (320p) ISBN 978-0-8129-8078-3
Two of France's most polarizing writers give free rein to their intellectual preoccupations, caprices—and egos—as they spar, in a fiery exchange of letters, over Judaism, morality, political commitment, postcommunist Russia, and their own celebrity.
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Michel Houellebecq, trans. from the French by Andrew Brown. Polity, $25 (314p) ISBN 978-1-5095-4995-5
France’s notorious novelist of caustic alienation hurls more firebombs in this provocative collection. Houellebecq (Submission) gathers over two decades of essays, reviews, criticism, and interviews that coldly diagnose the sicknesses of...
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Michel Houellebecq, trans. from the French by Shaun Whiteside. Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, $32 (544p) ISBN 978-0-374-60842-2
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...
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Michel Houellebecq, trans. from the French by Shaun Whiteside. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $27 (320p) ISBN 978-0-374-26102-3
In his latest provocation, Houellebecq (Submission) brilliantly pokes at modern questions of free trade, social decline, and overmedication, while continually undermining the work with puerile sequences that have little to do with the plot. Florent-C
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