Michel Houellebecq - Novels & Non-Fiction (6 books)

MICHEL HOUELLEBECQ (b. 1956) is a controversial and award-winning French author.

He became the so-called "pop star of the single generation" with his début novel WHATEVER (1994). His second novel, THE ELEMENTARY PARTICLES, became an instant "nihilistic classic", winning the the 1998 Prix Novembre and the 2002 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Houellebecq's explicit criticism of Islam in PLATFORM (2001), together with an interview he gave to the magazine Lire, led to accusations of inciting racial hatred.

THE MAP AND THE TERRITORY (2010) won the Prix Goncourt but Slate magazine accused him of plagiarising some passages of this book from French Wikipedia. Houellebecq denied the accusation, stating that "taking passages word for word was not stealing so long as the motives were to recycle them for artistic purposes."

A number of literary critics have labeled Houellebecq's novels "vulgar," "pamphlet literature" and "pornography"; he has been accused of obscenity, racism, misogyny and Islamophobia. His works, particularly THE ELEMENTARY PARTICLES, were poorly received by the French literary intelligentsia. On the other hand, Lorin Stein, now editor of The Paris Review, made a spirited defense: "Houellebecq may despair of love in a free market, but he takes love more seriously, as an artistic problem and a fact about the world, than most polite novelists would dare to do; when he brings his sweeping indignation to bear on one memory, one moment when things seemed about to turn out all right for his characters, and didn't, his compassion can blow you away."

PUBLIC ENEMIES (2011) is a wide-ranging and freewheeling exchange of letters between Houellebecq and philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy. What began as a secret correspondence between two self-described "whipping boys" and bitter enemies evolved into a remarkable joint personal meditation by France's premier literary and political live wires.


All the following books are in ePUB format:

* THE ELEMENTARY PARTICLES (Knopf, 2000). Translated by Frank Wynne.

* THE MAP AND THE TERRITORY (Knopf, 2012). Translated by Gavin Bowd.

* PLATFORM (Knopf, 2003). Translated by Frank Wynne.

* THE POSSIBILITY OF AN ISLAND (Knopf, 2006). Translated by Gavin Bowd.

* PUBLIC ENEMIES: Dueling Writers Take on Each Other and the World [with Bernard-Henri Lévy] (Random House, 2011). Translated by Miriam Frendo and Frank Wynne.

* WHATEVER (Serpents Tail, 1998). Translated by Paul Hammond.