“Annihilate”: pirate copies of the new Houellebecq multiply on the Internet

Michel Houellebecq victim of his success? His new novel entitled Annihilate has just been hacked, two weeks before its official sale on January 7. “It seems that the text is already circulating on the networks, in a quality PDF“, indicated Tuesday on Twitter Hervé Bienvault, a blogger specializing in electronic books. According to him, Annihilate would have already been the subject of “8,000 downloads on a single Quebec site“and would also be accessible on”a russian server“and”mirror sites well known to academic circles“.

Whereas The Parisian the information confirmed on Wednesday, AFP affirms this Thursday that there are actually two sites where we find this quality copy as well as a third site which allows to obtain, still illegally, an Epub version, intended for e-readers . Flammarion, the writer’s publisher, says his legal and IT departments are doing their best to get the web pages in question closed.

This is not the first time that Michel Houellebecq, one of the most translated contemporary French authors in the world, has been hacked. End of December 2014, Submission had already “leaked” on the networks before its release on January 7, 2015. At the time, it was probably a scanned version of a copy intended for the press. The case will not have legal follow-up and will not prevent the book from prancing at the top of sales.

After announcing the release date of the new novel from the hottest writer of his generation, Flammarion unveiled its cover and title, Annihilate, last Friday. The publishing house asked in writing to the journalists who received it not to reveal anything of its contents before December 30. But according to an indiscretion by the Minister of the Economy Bruno Le Maire in early October, the writer would defend “French industry”.