Benedicte Page, guardian.co.uk, Monday 8 November 2010
France's most controversial novelist Michel Houellebecq has received what could be perceived as a backhanded compliment, winning the country's leading literary prize, the Prix Goncourt, for a novel in which a character named Houellebecq is brutally murdered.
Houellebecq's fifth novel, La carte et le territoire, was awarded the prize, which has great kudos but only a token €10 (£8.60) cash value, earlier today.
The writer has long polarised critical opinion in his native country, and elsewhere, for highly provocative works including Atomised and The Possibility of an Island. His critics have charged him with obscenity and misogyny, and his outspoken attacks on Islam, which he has called "the most stupid religion", landed him in court in 2002 on a charge of inciting racial hatred, of which he was acquitted.
Houellebecq also hit the headlines after savage exchanges with his estranged mother Lucie Ceccaldi; he painted a deeply unflattering portrait of her in his novel Plateforme, and she responded by writing a book of her own in which she called him a liar and a parasite.
His new novel – in English, The Map and the Territory, though the novel itself has yet to be translated – has been described as part-thriller and part-satire. It features a reclusive, misanthropic artist, and a handful of actual French media celebrities, including author Houellebecq, an alcoholic with poor personal hygiene. The novel revolves around the investigation into Houellebecq's sadistic murder: the unfortunate man is decapitated.
Full piece at The Guardian.
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