Michel Houellebecq (born Michel Thomas), born 26 February 1958 (birth certificate), on the French island of R?union is a controversial and award-winning French novelist. He left France and lived in Ireland for some years. He currently lives in Spain.
The son of Lucie Ceccaldi, an Algeria-born French doctor, and her husband,[1] Ren? Thomas, a ski instructor and mountain guide, Houellebecq was born on the French island of R?union. He also lived in Algeria from the age of five months until 1961, with his maternal grandmother. At the age of six, he was sent to France to live with his paternal grandmother, a communist. Her maiden name was Houellebecq, which became his pen name. Later, he went to Lyc?e Henri Moissan, a high school at Meaux in the north-east of Paris, as a boarder. He then went to Lyc?e Chaptal in Paris to follow preparation courses in order to join French Grandes ?coles (elite schools). He began attending the Institut National Agronomique Paris-Grignon in 1975. He started a literary review called Karamazov and wrote poetry.
Houellebecq graduated as an agronomical engineer in 1978. He later worked as a computer administrator in Paris, including at the French National Assembly, before he became the so-called "pop star of the single generation". Gaining fame with the novel Extension du domaine de la lutte in 1994 (translated into English by Paul Hammond as Whatever), he won the 1998 Prix Novembre with his novel Les Particules ?l?mentaires (translated by Frank Wynne) and published as Atomised (Heinemann, UK) or, The Elementary Particles (Knopf, US). The novel became an instant "nihilistic classic". The New York Times, however, described it as "a deeply repugnant read." The novel won Houellebecq?along with his translator, Frank Wynne?the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award in 2002.
The author's following novel, Plateforme (2001), earned him a wider reputation. It is a romance, told mostly in the first-person by an aging male arts administrator, with many sex scenes and an approbation of prostitution and sex tourism. The novel's depiction of life and its explicit criticism of Islam and the Muslim faith, together with an interview its author gave to the magazine Lire, led to accusations against Houellebecq by several organisations, including France's Human Rights League, the Mecca-based World Islamic League and the mosques of Paris and Lyon. Charges were brought to trial, in circumstances reminiscent of the controversy over Salman Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses at the end of the 1980s; but a panel of three judges, delivering their verdict to a packed Paris courtroom, acquitted the author of having provoked racial hatred, ascribing Houellebecq's opinions to the legitimate right of criticizing religions.
A recurrent theme in Houellebecq's novels is the intrusion of free-market economics into human relationships and sexuality.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
The son of Lucie Ceccaldi, an Algeria-born French doctor, and her husband,[1] Ren? Thomas, a ski instructor and mountain guide, Houellebecq was born on the French island of R?union. He also lived in Algeria from the age of five months until 1961, with his maternal grandmother. At the age of six, he was sent to France to live with his paternal grandmother, a communist. Her maiden name was Houellebecq, which became his pen name. Later, he went to Lyc?e Henri Moissan, a high school at Meaux in the north-east of Paris, as a boarder. He then went to Lyc?e Chaptal in Paris to follow preparation courses in order to join French Grandes ?coles (elite schools). He began attending the Institut National Agronomique Paris-Grignon in 1975. He started a literary review called Karamazov and wrote poetry.
Houellebecq graduated as an agronomical engineer in 1978. He later worked as a computer administrator in Paris, including at the French National Assembly, before he became the so-called "pop star of the single generation". Gaining fame with the novel Extension du domaine de la lutte in 1994 (translated into English by Paul Hammond as Whatever), he won the 1998 Prix Novembre with his novel Les Particules ?l?mentaires (translated by Frank Wynne) and published as Atomised (Heinemann, UK) or, The Elementary Particles (Knopf, US). The novel became an instant "nihilistic classic". The New York Times, however, described it as "a deeply repugnant read." The novel won Houellebecq?along with his translator, Frank Wynne?the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award in 2002.
The author's following novel, Plateforme (2001), earned him a wider reputation. It is a romance, told mostly in the first-person by an aging male arts administrator, with many sex scenes and an approbation of prostitution and sex tourism. The novel's depiction of life and its explicit criticism of Islam and the Muslim faith, together with an interview its author gave to the magazine Lire, led to accusations against Houellebecq by several organisations, including France's Human Rights League, the Mecca-based World Islamic League and the mosques of Paris and Lyon. Charges were brought to trial, in circumstances reminiscent of the controversy over Salman Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses at the end of the 1980s; but a panel of three judges, delivering their verdict to a packed Paris courtroom, acquitted the author of having provoked racial hatred, ascribing Houellebecq's opinions to the legitimate right of criticizing religions.
A recurrent theme in Houellebecq's novels is the intrusion of free-market economics into human relationships and sexuality.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
- Extension du domaine de la lutte (1994) [Eng: Whatever]
- Les Particules ?l?mentaires (1998) [Eng: Atomised (UK); The Elementary Particles (US)]
- Lanzarote (2000)
- Plateforme (2001) [Eng: Platform]
- La Possibilit? d'une ?le (2005) [Eng: The Possibility of an Island]
