AROUND PARIS THIS autumn, one heard all the rumours. He’s been paid €1 million for world rights . . . No, it was €1.5 million . . . And you know why the book is embargoed until publication? Because it’s “merdique” . . . No, that’s just his enemies talking.

Who was this figure around whom so much talk swirled? Michel Houellebecq, a man who is either the saviour of the contemporary French novel, or is symptomatic of the navel-gazing that so dominates French literature today.

Whichever camp you are in, there is no doubt that, since the publication of his second novel, Atomised, Houellebecq has become the most talked-about French writer de nos jours. Even those who despise his misanthropy recognise that he is one of the few contemporary novelists addressing the ennui of modern life.

Houellebecq’s world is hyper-consumerist, devoid of meaning or purpose. Our lives are vacant and idiotic. Or, as he notes in this new novel, The Possibility of an Island, youth is the only time for happiness, “its only season”:

“Later on, having started a family . . . they (the young) would be introduced to work, worry, responsibility and the difficulty of existence . . . while ceaselessly bearing witness — powerless and shamefilled — to the irreversible degradation of their own bodies.”

If you think that is just a tad nihilistic, just wait for Houellebecq’s assertion that sex is the only real delight known to mankind: “. . . it was in truth the sole pleasure, the sole objective of human existence, and all other pleasures — whether associated with rich food, tobacco, alcohol or drugs — were only derisory and desperate compensations, mini-suicides that did not have the courage to speak their name . . .”

No doubt, Houellebecq’s bleak appraisal of the human condition has struck a chord in a France often racked by self-doubt and boredom. But you don’t just read him to flagellate yourself for being a pathetic consumerist. You also read him for his undistilled outrageousness. When he writes a sex scene, it is explicit and hard core. When he voices his opinions on matters such as, say, Islamic fundamentalism, he takes off the gloves. And his humour is often unapologetically tasteless. Consider:

“Do you know what they call the fat stuff around the vagina?”

“No.”

“The woman.”

It is no surprise that Houellebecq has been often been accused of misogyny.

He happily plays the misanthropic card whenever possible, having his narrator note: “On the day of my son’s suicide I made a tomato omelette . . . I had never loved that child; he was as stupid as his mother and as nasty as his father. His death was far from a catastrophe; you can live without such human beings.”

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