Houellebecq, Michel – The Bell Bookshop

Annihilation

Emma — Thu, 21 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

A Daily Express Book of the Year

‘A must-read’ – Evening Standard

‘Houellebecq’s new book proves he is one of the world’s greatest novelists’ – The Daily Telegraph

‘The most important novelist to have been publishing in all of Europe over the past three decades’ – The Sunday Times

As France is in the midst of a closely fought presidential campaign, the government falls victim to a series of mysterious and unsettling cyberattacks. Paul Raison is caught up in the state’s scrambled response, working as an advisor to the finance minister and with family connections to the DGSI, the French counterterrorism agency.

But Paul’s private life is as strained as the nation is troubled. His marriage has collapsed, he’s drifted from his siblings, and their father has been hospitalised following a stroke. In telling Paul’s story, Annihilation moves seamlessly between tense espionage thriller and poignant family drama. The result is an extraordinary and moving meditation on loving, caring and dying.

‘Annihilation leans neither towards hope nor despair, but towards a transcendent serenity’ The Guardian

Translated from the French by Shaun Whiteside

_Annihilation_{was a #1 Livres Hebdo bestseller in France w/c 10/01/2022, and a #1 Spiegel bestseller in Germany w/c 24/01/2022}

Annihilation

Emma — Thu, 19 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

‘An extended meditation on human frailty and the lack of spirituality in the Western world . . . Houellebecq displays compassion and empathy, and a belief in the redemptive power of love.’ – New Statesman

‘The most important novelist to have been publishing in all of Europe over the past three decades’ – The Sunday Times

It is 2027. France is in a state of economic decline and moral decay.

As the country plunges into a closely-fought presidential campaign, the French state falls victim to a series of mysterious and unsettling cyberattacks. The sophisticated nature of the attacks leaves the best computer scientists at the DGSI – the French counter-terrorism agency – scrambling for answers.

An advisor to the country’s Finance Minister, Paul Raison is close to the heart of government. His wife Prudence is a Treasury official, while his father Ãdouard, now retired, has spent his career working for the DGSI. When Ãdouard has a stroke, his children have an opportunity to repair their strained relationships, as they determine to free their father from the medical centre where he is wasting away.

Michel Houellebecq’s Annihilation reveals new sides to his writing, adding compassion and tenderness to the emotions of rage and irony that have powered both him and his earlier works to international fame.

‘We have no one to match Houellebecq.’ – The Daily Telegraph

Translated from the French by Shaun Whiteside

_Annihilation_{was a #1 Livres Hebdo bestseller in France w/c 10/01/2022, and a #1 Spiegel bestseller in Germany w/c 24/01/2022}

Submission

Emma — Thu, 01 Sep 2016 00:00:00 +0000

As the 2022 French Presidential election looms, two candidates emerge as favourites: Marine Le Pen of the Front National, and the charismatic Muhammed Ben Abbes of the growing Muslim Fraternity. Forming a controversial alliance with the political left to block the Front National’s alarming ascendency, Ben Abbes sweeps to power, and overnight the country is transformed. This proves to be the death knell of French secularism, as Islamic law comes into force: women are veiled, polygamy is encouraged and, for our narrator François – misanthropic, middle-aged and alienated – life is set on a new course.

Submission is a devastating satire, comic and melancholy by turns, and a profound meditation on faith and meaning in Western society.