Jerome Vermelin –
It is the literary event of January. After announcing the release of Michel Houellebecq’s new novel at the beginning of November, on January 7, Flammarion announces this Friday the title and the cover of his 8th book, entitled “Destroy”. Two years later Serotonin, we knew that the writer had things to say since this book will contain 736 pages.
As with the publication of his previous novel, Michel Houellebecq decided not to grant any interview to the press. We would have loved to hear him explain his work, and of course react to political news in the run-up to the presidential election. It will therefore be necessary to read it to know his perspective on France today.
Released in January 2015, Submission recounted the coming to power in 2022 of a Muslim president and foreshadowed, among other things, the controversy over Islamo-leftism in French universities. Serotonin, in 2019, echoed the yellow vests movement by staging the blockage of a highway by angry farmers.
Last year, Michel Houellebecq published “Interventions 2020”, a collection of his positions published in the press in recent years. There was a text published in January 2019 in “Harper’s Magazine” where he wrote that “Donald Trump is a good president”. But also a “conversation” with Geoffrey Lejeune, the editorial director of Valeurs Actuelles, in which he saw in Eric Zemmour “the most interesting contemporary avatar” from “non-Christian Catholics“, admiring the Church without believing in God.