Michel Houellebecq

Michel Houellebecq wrote The Elementary Particles, a novel about how the sexual revolution destroyed the possibility of love — or perhaps about how man as a biological species has run its course. The book was hated, and bought.

He was born on Réunion in 1956; his real name is Michel Thomas. His mother left; his grandmother raised him. An agronomist by training, he turned first to poetry, then to novels.

Whatever (1994) shows an office worker who sees the world as a war of all against all — sexual as much as social. Platform takes on sex tourism and an Islamist terror attack. Submission (2015) imagines France electing a Muslim president.

Provocateur or prophet? Probably both. The Prix Goncourt came in 2010, for The Map and the Territory.