With this week's publication of his new book, Sérotonine, Michel Houellebecq has reinforced his reputation as France's diviner of the dreadful. In 2001, his novel Plateforme, which climaxes with an Islamist terrorist attack on a Thai tourist resort, was published shortly before the 9/11 attacks. In 2015, the publication of Houellebecq's Soumission, which portrays an Islamist political party taking power in France, coincided with the bloody jihadist attack on the offices of the weekly paper Charlie Hebdo.
Now, with the release of Sérotonine, France's best-known writer since Albert Camus or Simone de Beauvoir has again written another best-selling novel that has also won critical admiration. But that's not all. Houellebecq again seems to have once again hired the Zeitgeist as his publicity agent, this time in the guise of the provincial protest movement known as the gilets jaunes, or yellow vests. Though the novelist has not, unlike other figures on the right, championed the movement, he has earned the moniker of its “prophet.” This association, in turn, reinforces Houellebecq's status, in the words of the newsmagazine L'Obs, as the “icon of extreme right” in France.
Read Full Article »