Press

What the critics say

A delicious exercise in satire and self-parody... His best ever
- Daily Telegraph

The outlaw of French letters returns with an acerbic riff on art and celebrity... witty, wildly erudite
- The Times

A dark master of invention... From the very first paragraph of this brilliant novel, the reader can be in no doubt that they're in the blisteringly bleak, darkly inventive grand massif that is Houellebeqc land
- Evening Standard

This book, so beautifully written, so inspiriting for all its pessimism, is the new novel I have loved best this year. We have not his equal
- Spectator

Impressive... Beguiling... He is a true original
- Observer

Elegiac... Compelling... A pleasure to read
- Times Literary Supplement

Have Michel Houellebecq and Martin Amis ever met? Despite a stylistic gulf…they might be spiritual cousins… In this Goncourt-winning novel, as amiably mischievous as the enfant terrible ever gets, his satirical burlesques of the Parisian art world and of tourist kitsch in La France Profonde comes closer to his cross-Channel twin than ever
- Independent Radar

A wry, clever, ruthlessly self-lacerating novel
- Independent on Sunday