The Elementary Particles

“This remarkable best-seller,” wrote The Economist , “is France’s biggest literary sensation since Françoise Sagan, people are saying, or since Albert Camus even . . . The passing to a new generation of the literary flame–albeit, in this instance, a blowtorch.” In a firestorm of controversy, l’affaire Houellebecq has spread throughout Europe and beyond, with translations of the book undertaken in nearly thirty countries around the world.

The central characters, Bruno and Michel, were born to a bohemian mother (but they had different fathers, of course) at the height of the sixties. Following her inevitable divorce, they endured separate childhoods and developed distinct identities. Bruno–a failure to his own family and literary calling–is pursued by sexual obsession and madness. Michel–a wholly asexual molecular biologist–expresses his disgust with society by engineering one that frees mankind at last from its uncontrollable, destructive urges.

An international phenomenon, The Elementary Particles is a furiously important novel.