Michel Houellebecq, the world star writer of contemporary French literature, publishes his eighth novel, “Anéantir” on January 7, with Flammarion editions. All the press has already echoed it for several days, the book was even pirated and disclosed on the internet before publication. In short, it is the literary event of this fall. 300,000 copies of this book will go on sale Friday. A novel between political thriller and tragedy of our human condition.
It is a luxurious edition with a white cardboard cover, fabric bookmark and paper designed not to yellow. The names of Michel Houellebecq and the publisher Flammarion frame the red title in black, Annihilate. 730 pages of a story in which all the melancholy of our human condition is scattered, and in which themes dear to the author unfold: the couple, loneliness, sexual misery, existential emptiness, death and, perhaps more unexpectedly, the love, beating heart of this new novel.
The story begins as a political thriller, internal security experts track down a mysterious terrorist group whose esoteric signs are displayed on the walls … We are in 2027, at the end of the mandate of a president whose name is never mentioned, but who closely resembles Emmanuel Macron alongside a minister named Bruno, inspired by the current Minister of Finance, Bruno Le Maire. The common thread of the novel is Paul Raison, a senior civil servant, a sort of disillusioned spokesperson for the author. Between dying places for the elderly, family, political and media unrest, veganism, desperate quest for spirituality. Michel Houellebecq, a real sponge of our time, unfolds the fate of his anti-hero with tragic and irony.
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