Michel Houellebecq Books In Order

Novels

Whatever (1998)
Atomised (2000)
Platform (2002)
Lanzarote (2003)
The Possibility of an Island (2005)
The Map and the Territory (2011)
Submission (2015)
Serotonin (2019)

Collections

Non fiction

H. P. Lovecraft (1999)
Thomas Ruff Nudes (2003)
Public Enemies (2011)
Interventions 2020 (2022)

Novels Book Covers

Collections Book Covers

Non fiction Book Covers

Michel Houellebecq Books Overview

Whatever

Michel Renault is a human void. Following the death of the father he barely knew, he endures his civil ser vice job while eking out an existence of prepackaged pleasure, hollow friendships, TV dinners, and po*rnography. On a group holiday in Thailand, however, he meets the shyly compelling Val rie, who soon pursues an agenda that Michel himself could never have thought possible: his own humanization. Back in Paris, they plunge into an affair that strays into S&M, public sex, and partner swapping, even as they devise a scheme to save Val rie’s ailing travel company by capitalizing on the only trade Michel has seen flourish in the Third World. Before long, he quits his job, and their business model for sex tourism is gradually implemented. But when they return to Thailand, where Michel s philosophy will be put into practice, he discovers that sex is neither the most consuming nor dangerous of passions…
From a suburbanized West crippled by hate crime to an East subsumed by materialism, Michel Houellebecq explores with characteristic provocativeness, but also with surprising tenderness the emotions that seem most resilient to any influence: love and hate. Platform is, as Anita Brookner has written, a brilliant novel, casting a prescient eye on the abuses and inequalities that lead to wider trouble.

Atomised

‘This remarkable best seller,’ wrote The Economist, ‘is France’s biggest literary sensation since Fran oise 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.

Platform

Lanzarote

In the follow up to his hugely successful and Impac award winning Atomised, Michel Houellebecq explores the hedonism of Lanzarote, the archetypal holiday island, in a book that is as blisteringly funny and acid as his novel. In the sector of the holiday market that caters for sun, sangria and house music, not to mention sex, Lanzarote rivals Corfu and Ibiza. Tourism in Lanzarote remains resolutely ungreen and certainly wholly uncultural, 21st century hedonism, set in a bizarre lunar landscape Martian, according to the travel agent. On Lanzarote, one can meet some fascinating human specimens notably Pam and Barbara, ‘non exclusive’ German lesbians who can give rise to some interesting combinations. Will they succeed in seducing Rudi, the police inspector from Luxembourg, currently living in exile in Brussels. Or will he join the ‘azraelian’ sect, as they prepare for humanity to be regenerated by extra terrestrials? As for our narrator, will he consider his week’s holiday on the island a success?

The Possibility of an Island

A worldwide phenomenon and the most famous 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. Having made a fortune producing comedies that skewer mankind’s consumerism, religious fundamentalism, sexual profligacy, and other affronts, Daniel is forty before he falls prey to the human condition himself: his beloved s body sags with age, their marriage dissolves, and true happiness seems a luxury reserved for their dog, Fox. After the colossal failure of his second great love affair, he joins a cult of health fanatics determined to produce a misery free eternal life manifested here in the voices of Daniel s subsequent clones, who enjoy the umpteenth Fox s companionship but shun the bands of fugitive humans on the horizon. Their commentary on Daniel s fate, and on the race as a whole, illuminates the basic tenets of our existence laughter, tears, love, remorse and their nostalgia for such emotions, all of which have long since disappeared. Laugh out loud funny, philosophically compelling, and flatly heartbreaking, 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.

The Map and the Territory

The most celebrated and controversial French novelist of our time now delivers his magnum opus about art and money, love and friendship and death, fathers and sons. The Map and the Territory is the story of an artist, Jed Martin, and his family and lovers and friends, the arc of his entire history rendered with sharp humor and powerful compassion. His earliest photographs, of countless industrial objects, were followed by a surprisingly successful series featuring Michelin road maps, which also happened to bring him the love of his life, Olga, a beautiful Russian working for a time in Paris. But global fame and fortune arrive when he turns to painting and produces a host of portraits that capture a wide range of professions, from the commonplace the owner of a local bar to the autobiographical his father, an accomplished architect and from the celebrated Bill Gates and Steve Jobs Discussing the Future of Information Technology to the literary a writer named Houellebecq, with whom he develops an unusually close relationship. Then, while his aging father his only living relative flirts with oblivion, a police inspector seeks Martin’s help in solving an unspeakably gruesome crime events that prove profoundly unsettling. Even so, now growing old himself, Jed Martin somehow discovers serenity and manages to add another startling chapter to his artistic legacy, a deeply moving conclusion to this saga of hopes and losses and dreams.

H. P. Lovecraft

‘Those who love life do not read. Nor do they go to the movies, actually. No matter what might be said, access to the artistic universe is more or less entirely the preserve of those who are a little fed up with the world.’ In this prescient work now with an introduction by Stephen King Michel Houellebecq, the author of the novels Platform and Elementary Particles, focuses his considerable analytical skills on H.P. Lovecraft, the seminal, enigmatic horror writer of the early 20th century. Houellebecq’s insights into the craft of writing illuminate both Lovecraft and Houellebecq s own work. The two are kindred spirits, sharing a uniquely dark worldview. But even as he outlines Lovecraft s rejection of this loathsome world, it is Houellebecq s adulation for the author that drives this work and makes it a love song, infusing the writing with an energy and passion not seen in Houellebecq s novels to date. Indispensable reading for anyone interested in Lovecraft, Houellebecq, or the past and future of horror. ‘ Houellebecq is fearless, vivid, and astringently honest.’ Los Angeles Times

Thomas Ruff Nudes

Thomas Ruff b. 1958, known for his deadpan portraits and gorgeous views of the night sky and architecture, is one of Germany’s leading contemporary artist/photographers. Among his recent work is an exploration of the internet, that parallel visual universe teeming with sexuality of every flavor and variety. He gathers from that virtual playground erotic and often po*rnographic photographs that he subsequently manipulates in his computer, making beautiful and disturbing artwork from visual material that, for better or worse, is probably more abundant than any other type of image in our world today. The pictures, which are graphic and abstract at the same time, are accompanied by an excerpt from a forthcoming novel by controversial French writer Michel Houellebecq, whose work is similarly influenced by the sex industry. Reviewing the series in the Village Voice, Jerry Saltz wrote: ‘Ruff may think these images are analytic or objective, but they’re also sweetly, luxuriantly visual…
Sex slips into something ravishingly, optically comfortable, and these everyday, off world images morph into parapaintings from the Planet Love.’

Public Enemies

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 L vy, 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. L vy extols heroism in the face of tyranny; Houellebecq sees himself as one who would fight little and badly. L vy 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 L vy puts it, it is we who will come out on top.