This book is a journey to the land of faith. That land is our own planet, ablaze with the fire Jesus Christ came to set here twenty centuries ago. For most of those centuries, Christianity was something of a provincial phenomenon. It had won the West, then its American excrescences, and seemed to be happy with that. Islam, Buddhism, and the religions of India could go right ahead and divide up the soul of the other continents. To be sure, the church’s missionary thrust never ceased driving it out beyond bounds that were too narrow. But it did so in peaks and valleys, and self-complacency tricked us back into the ghetto more than once. This is a book of living witness. It teems with the witness of the new countries, the “young churches” that live the gospel today in the Third World, in another culture, and in a situation of poverty as their daily lot. The word of God is a critique of every human society. And so the activity of the Spirit among these Christians of the church resurgent in Africa, Asia, and Latin America is a critique of the way we of the West understand that word—and live it. Time was when we could magnanimously welcome Third World Christians’ “contribution.” Those days are gone forever. Today we have to be willing to be jostled in our certitudes. And we have to be willing to change our attitudes and behavior.
Een twaalfjarige jongen klimt in de bergen in een elektriciteitsmast, helemaal tot op het platform. De gapende leegte onder zijn voeten oefent een vreemde aantrekkingskracht op hem uit: zal hij springen? Dertig jaar later moet hij terugdenken aan dat ene moment. Hij heeft de liefde van zijn leven gevonden en zijn eigen economische waarde opgeschroefd door een nieuwe vorm van toerisme te lanceren, maar hoe stabiel is geluk? Met Platform houdt Michel Houellebecq de moderne westerse samenleving opnieuw een spiegel voor, waarin enkele minder aangename details van onze wereld van markt en strijd worden uitvergroot en vervormd. Michel Houellebecq (1958) is het even verguisde als bewierookte paradepaard van de Franse letteren. Vooral met zijn grote romans en de daarin verwoorde (vaak tegenstrijdige) opvattingen verwierf hij mondiale literaire bekendheid. Sinds 1998 leeft hij in zelfverkozen ballingschap in Ierland.
This book is a journey to the land of faith. That land is our own planet, ablaze with the fire Jesus Christ came to set here twenty centuries ago. For most of those centuries, Christianity was something of a provincial phenomenon. It had won the West, then its American excrescences, and seemed to be happy with that. Islam, Buddhism, and the religions of India could go right ahead and divide up the soul of the other continents. To be sure, the church’s missionary thrust never ceased driving it out beyond bounds that were too narrow. But it did so in peaks and valleys, and self-complacency tricked us back into the ghetto more than once. This is a book of living witness. It teems with the witness of the new countries, the “young churches” that live the gospel today in the Third World, in another culture, and in a situation of poverty as their daily lot. The word of God is a critique of every human society. And so the activity of the Spirit among these Christians of the church resurgent in Africa, Asia, and Latin America is a critique of the way we of the West understand that word—and live it. Time was when we could magnanimously welcome Third World Christians’ “contribution.” Those days are gone forever. Today we have to be willing to be jostled in our certitudes. And we have to be willing to change our attitudes and behavior.
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 international publishing sensation is now available in the United States—two brilliant, controversial authors confront each other and their enemies in an unforgettable exchange of letters. In one corner, Bernard-Henri Lévy, creator of the classic Barbarism with a Human Face, dismissed by the media as a wealthy, self-promoting, arrogant do-gooder. In the other, Michel Houellebecq, bestselling author of The Elementary Particles, widely derided as a sex-obsessed racist and misogynist. What began as a secret correspondence between bitter enemies evolved into a remarkable joint personal meditation by France’s premier literary and political live wires. An instant international bestseller, Public Enemies has now been translated into English for all lovers of superb insights, scandalous opinions, and iconoclastic ideas. In wicked, wide-ranging, and freewheeling letters, the two self-described “whipping boys” debate whether they crave disgrace or secretly have an insane desire to please. Lévy extols heroism in the face of tyranny; Houellebecq sees himself as one who would “fight little and badly.” Lévy says “life does not ‘live’” unless he can write; Houellebecq bemoans work as leaving him in such “a state of nervous exhaustion that it takes several bottles of alcohol to get out.” There are also touching and intimate exchanges on the existence of God and about their own families. Dazzling, delightful, and provocative, Public Enemies is a death match between literary lions, remarkable men who find common ground, confident that, in the end (as Lévy puts it), “it is we who will come out on top.”
Artist Jed Martin emerges from a ten-year hiatus with good news. It has nothing to do with his broken boiler, the approach of another lamentably awkward Christmas dinner with his father or the memory of his doomed love affair with the beautiful Olga. It is that, for his new exhibition, he has secured the involvement of none other than celebrated novelist Michel Houellebecq. The exhibition brings Jed new levels of global fame. But, his boiler is still broken, his ailing father flirts with oblivion and, worst of all, he is contacted by an inspector requiring his help in solving an unspeakable, atrocious and gruesome crime, involving none other than celebrated novelist Michel Houellebecq... Shortlisted for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award 2013.
Quelle que soit la quantité de mensonges, de faux souvenirs et de rêves dont on s'entoure au long d'une vie, c'est toujours le même corps qu'on retrouve, au matin, dans l'éprouvante expérience du réveil ; le corps est sans miracle. Quelles que soient les discontinuités, les absurdités, les ruptures qu'on essaie d'introduire dans un roman, le lecteur parvient toujours à reconstituer une histoire ; son expérience de la vie humaine est sans limite. En ce qui concerne la poésie, la situation est moins claire." M.H.
LONGLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE 2020 A powerful criticism of modern life by one of the most provocative and prophetic writers of our age Florent-Claude Labrouste is dying of sadness. Despised by his girlfriend and on the brink of career failure, his last hope for relief comes in the form of a newly available antidepressant that alters the brain's release of serotonin. When he returns to the Normandy countryside in search of serenity, he instead finds a rural community left behind by globalisation and red-tape agricultural policies, with local farmers longing for an impossible return towhat they remember as a golden age. 'Despite its provocations, this is a novel of romantic and sorrowful ideas: Houellebecq as troubadour, singing lost loves' Rachel Kushner Michel Houellebecq has good claim to be the most interesting novelist of our times. . . Exhilarating in its nihilism, often very funny and always enjoyable' Evening Standard
A worldwide phenomenon and the most important French novelist since Camus, Michel Houellebecq now delivers his magnum opus–a tale of our present circumstances told from the future, when humanity as we know it has vanished. Surprisingly poignant, philosophically compelling, and occasionally laugh-out-loud funny, The Possibility of an Island is at once an indictment, an elegy, and a celebration of everything we have and are at risk of losing. It is a masterpiece from one of the world’s most innovative writers.
‘The most interesting novelist of our times’ Evening Standard ‘The most important novelist to have been publishing in all of Europe over the past three decades’ The Sunday Times ‘We have no one to match Houellebecq.’ The Daily Telegraph 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, disgust and irony that have powered both him and his earlier works to international fame. 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
As the 2022 French Presidential election looms, two candidates emerge as favourites: Marine Le Pen of the Front National, and the charismatic Muhammed Ben Abbes of the growing Muslim Fraternity. Forming a controversial alliance with the political left to block the Front National's alarming ascendency, Ben Abbes sweeps to power, and overnight the country is transformed. This proves to be the death knell of French secularism, as Islamic law comes into force: women are veiled, polygamy is encouraged and, for our narrator Fran�ois - misanthropic, middle-aged and alienated - life is set on a new course. Submission is a devastating satire, comic and melancholy by turns, and a profound meditation on faith and meaning in Western society.
Mus peut-être par l'angoisse inhérente à l'idée de la mort, angoisse qui leur serait propre selon l'opinion commune qui veut que l'espèce humaine soit la seule dont les membres sachent qu'un jour ils ne vivront plus, les gens de toutes races se sont dotés d'institutions et d'usages qui, même si ce n'est pas là le but expressément visé, leur fournissent des moyens de cesser, du moins pour un temps et de manière tout imaginaire, d'être l'homme ou la femme qu'on est dans l'existence quotidienne, pratiques fort diverses qui (sans préjudice de motivations plus directement utilitaires) sont pour l'individu des occasions concrètes d'échapper dans une certaine mesure à sa condition, comme s'il lui fallait d'une façon ou d'une autre effacer des limites qui sont par définition celles d'un être périssable et doué de pouvoirs précaires.
Michel Houellebecq's Serotonin is a scathing, frightening, hilarious, raunchy, offensive, politically incorrect novel about the current state of Europe, Western civilization, and mankind in general. Deeply depressed by his romantic and professional failures, the aging hedonist and agricultural engineer Florent-Claude Labrouste feels he is "dying of sadness." His young girlfriend hates him, his career is pretty much over, and he has to keep himself highly medicated to cope with day-to-day city life. Struggling with "sex, male angst, solitude, consumerism, globalisation, urban planning, and more sex" (The Economist), Labrouste decides to head for the hills, returning to Normandy, where he once worked promoting regional cheeses, and where, too, he had once been in love, and even—it now seems—happy. There he finds a countryside devastated by globalization and European agricultural policies, and local farmers longing, like Labrouste himself, for an impossible return to what they remember as a golden age: the smaller world of the premodern era. As the farmers prepare for what might be an armed insurrection, it becomes clear that the health of one miserable body and a suffering body politic are not so different, in the end, and that all concerned may be rushing toward a catastrophe a whole drugstore's worth of antidepressants won't be enough to make bearable.
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