Annihilation
A Novel
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- $17.99
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
Michel Houellebecq’s international bestseller— a thrilling, ambitious, and unexpectedly tender chronicle of modern existence.
It is 2027. France is in a state of economic decline and moral decay.
As the country plunges into a contentious presidential race, the government falls victim to a series of mysterious and unsettling cyberattacks in which videos of brutal decapitations and skillfully crafted deepfakes proliferate on the web.
Paul Raison’s own troubles are bound up with those of the country. He is an adviser to the finance minister; his wife, Prudence, is a Treasury official; and his father, Édouard, now retired, spent his career in the security services. Paul, badly overworked, is facing the threat of separation from his wife. When his father suddenly suffers a stroke, Paul must depart Paris for his provincial hometown, where he and his siblings now have the opportunity to repair their strained relationships with Édouard as they determine to free him from the decrepit public nursing home where he is wasting away.
Michel Houellebecq’s Annihilation reveals a new dimension of his oeuvre, adding compassion and tenderness to the irony and cutting insight that brought him international fame. Here, we see France’s most celebrated novelist taking stock of his country on the eve of great change—asking how, and whether, a society and its people can change course.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Houellebecq (Submission) wraps a ponderous family drama around a plodding near-future political thriller. It's November 2026 and Paris has been rocked by a series of mysterious cyberattacks and disturbing deepfake videos, including an apparent decapitation of France's finance minister, Bruno Juge. Paul Raison, 49, works closely with Bruno, and becomes privy to his scheme to be France's next president following a "post-democracy" constitutional change. When Paul's father, Édouard, a retired French intelligence agent, has a stroke and slips into a coma, Paul rushes from Paris to his hometown along with his devoutly Catholic sister, Cécile, and their younger brother, Aurélien. Paul, whose marriage to Prudence, a Wiccan, has been sexless and moribund for years, grapples with family squabbles and conspires with his siblings to kidnap Édouard from the hospital over concerns about his care. On the eve of an election where the far-right candidate is performing surprisingly well against Bruno's party, a terror attack on a migrant boat upends French politics. There's some stimulating philosophizing about the limits of representative government, and critics of religion will appreciate the excoriating depictions of Cécile's and Prudence's beliefs, but Houellebecq neglects to tie together or even resolve the novel's main threads. This ambitious outing topples under its own weight.
