.jpg/1502px-Michel_Houellebecq_no_Fronteiras_do_Pensamento_Porto_Alegre_2016_(3x4_cropped).jpg)
Community hub
Recent from talks
Knowledge base stats:
Talk channels stats:
Members stats:
Michel Houellebecq
Michel Houellebecq (French pronunciation: [miʃɛl wɛlbɛk]; born Michel Thomas on 26 February 1956) is a French author of novels, poems, and essays, as well as an occasional actor, filmmaker, and singer. His first book was a biographical essay on the horror writer H. P. Lovecraft. Houellebecq published his first novel Whatever in 1994 and his second, Atomised, in 1998, to international fame as well as controversy. He has published several books of poetry, including The Art of Struggle in 1996.
An offhand remark about Islam during a publicity tour for his 2001 novel Platform led to Houellebecq being taken to court for inciting racial hatred. He was eventually cleared of all charges. He subsequently moved to Ireland for several years, before moving back to France. In 2010, he published The Map and the Territory, which won the prestigious Prix Goncourt. In 2015, his novel Submission sparked controversy for its depiction of Islam and was accused of plagiarism in a lawsuit later deemed inadmissible. Annihilation was published in 2022. He was described in 2015 as "France's biggest literary export and, some say, greatest living writer" and called himself "probably islamophobic". In a 2017 Deutsche Welle article, he is dubbed the "undisputed star, and enfant terrible, of modern French literature".
Houellebecq was born Michel Thomas on the French island of Réunion in 1956. His mother Lucie Ceccaldi was a French physician of Corsican descent, born in Algeria, his father René Thomas was a ski instructor and mountain guide. Houellebecq's official date of birth is 26 February 1956, although he has sometimes stated that he may have actually been born in 1958.
He lived in Algeria from the age of five months until 1961, with his paternal grandmother. In a lengthy autobiographical article published on his website (now defunct), he states that his parents "lost interest in [his] existence pretty quickly", and at the age of six, he was sent to France to live with his paternal grandmother, a communist, while his mother left to live a hippie lifestyle in Brazil with her recent boyfriend. His grandmother's maiden name was Houellebecq, which he took as his pen name. Later, he went to Lycée Henri Moissan, a high school at Meaux north-east of Paris, as a boarder. He then went to Lycée Chaptal in Paris to follow preparation courses in order to qualify for grandes écoles (elite schools). He began attending the Institut National Agronomique Paris-Grignon in 1975. He started a literary review called Karamazov (named after Fyodor Dostoevsky's last novel) and wrote poetry. He graduated in 1980.
Houellebecq worked as a computer administrator in Paris, including at the French National Assembly to support himself as a writer.[citation needed] His first poems appeared in 1985 in the magazine La Nouvelle Revue.[citation needed] Six years later, in 1991, he published a biographical essay on the horror writer H. P. Lovecraft, a teenage passion, with the programmatic subtitle Against the World, Against Life.[citation needed] A short poetical essay named Rester vivant : méthode (To Stay Alive) appeared the same year, dealing with the art of writing as a way of life – or rather, a way of not-dying and being able to write in spite of apathy and disgust for life.[citation needed] It was followed by his first collection of poetry, La poursuite du bonheur (The pursuit of happiness).[citation needed]
In 1994 his debut novel Extension du domaine de la lutte was published and he started to gain fame. Eventually he became the so-called "pop star of the single generation".[citation needed]
Throughout the 1990s, Houellebecq published several books of poetry, including The Art of Struggle in 1996, which, in a 2005 video interview for the magazine Les Inrockuptibles, he cited as his most accomplished book to date, the one he would usually choose if compelled to read whatever he wanted among his published works, and articles in magazines such as Les Inrockuptibles or more confidential literary publications such as L'Infini edited by Philippe Sollers). Most of those texts were later collected in Interventions (1998, expanded in 2009 and 2020).[citation needed]
At that time,[when?] he lived at the same address as fellow writer Marc-Édouard Nabe, at 103, rue de la Convention in Paris. Nabe wrote about this proximity in Le Vingt-Septième Livre (2006), comparing both neighbours' careers and the way their writings were met by critics and audiences.
Hub AI
Michel Houellebecq AI simulator
(@Michel Houellebecq_simulator)
Michel Houellebecq
Michel Houellebecq (French pronunciation: [miʃɛl wɛlbɛk]; born Michel Thomas on 26 February 1956) is a French author of novels, poems, and essays, as well as an occasional actor, filmmaker, and singer. His first book was a biographical essay on the horror writer H. P. Lovecraft. Houellebecq published his first novel Whatever in 1994 and his second, Atomised, in 1998, to international fame as well as controversy. He has published several books of poetry, including The Art of Struggle in 1996.
An offhand remark about Islam during a publicity tour for his 2001 novel Platform led to Houellebecq being taken to court for inciting racial hatred. He was eventually cleared of all charges. He subsequently moved to Ireland for several years, before moving back to France. In 2010, he published The Map and the Territory, which won the prestigious Prix Goncourt. In 2015, his novel Submission sparked controversy for its depiction of Islam and was accused of plagiarism in a lawsuit later deemed inadmissible. Annihilation was published in 2022. He was described in 2015 as "France's biggest literary export and, some say, greatest living writer" and called himself "probably islamophobic". In a 2017 Deutsche Welle article, he is dubbed the "undisputed star, and enfant terrible, of modern French literature".
Houellebecq was born Michel Thomas on the French island of Réunion in 1956. His mother Lucie Ceccaldi was a French physician of Corsican descent, born in Algeria, his father René Thomas was a ski instructor and mountain guide. Houellebecq's official date of birth is 26 February 1956, although he has sometimes stated that he may have actually been born in 1958.
He lived in Algeria from the age of five months until 1961, with his paternal grandmother. In a lengthy autobiographical article published on his website (now defunct), he states that his parents "lost interest in [his] existence pretty quickly", and at the age of six, he was sent to France to live with his paternal grandmother, a communist, while his mother left to live a hippie lifestyle in Brazil with her recent boyfriend. His grandmother's maiden name was Houellebecq, which he took as his pen name. Later, he went to Lycée Henri Moissan, a high school at Meaux north-east of Paris, as a boarder. He then went to Lycée Chaptal in Paris to follow preparation courses in order to qualify for grandes écoles (elite schools). He began attending the Institut National Agronomique Paris-Grignon in 1975. He started a literary review called Karamazov (named after Fyodor Dostoevsky's last novel) and wrote poetry. He graduated in 1980.
Houellebecq worked as a computer administrator in Paris, including at the French National Assembly to support himself as a writer.[citation needed] His first poems appeared in 1985 in the magazine La Nouvelle Revue.[citation needed] Six years later, in 1991, he published a biographical essay on the horror writer H. P. Lovecraft, a teenage passion, with the programmatic subtitle Against the World, Against Life.[citation needed] A short poetical essay named Rester vivant : méthode (To Stay Alive) appeared the same year, dealing with the art of writing as a way of life – or rather, a way of not-dying and being able to write in spite of apathy and disgust for life.[citation needed] It was followed by his first collection of poetry, La poursuite du bonheur (The pursuit of happiness).[citation needed]
In 1994 his debut novel Extension du domaine de la lutte was published and he started to gain fame. Eventually he became the so-called "pop star of the single generation".[citation needed]
Throughout the 1990s, Houellebecq published several books of poetry, including The Art of Struggle in 1996, which, in a 2005 video interview for the magazine Les Inrockuptibles, he cited as his most accomplished book to date, the one he would usually choose if compelled to read whatever he wanted among his published works, and articles in magazines such as Les Inrockuptibles or more confidential literary publications such as L'Infini edited by Philippe Sollers). Most of those texts were later collected in Interventions (1998, expanded in 2009 and 2020).[citation needed]
At that time,[when?] he lived at the same address as fellow writer Marc-Édouard Nabe, at 103, rue de la Convention in Paris. Nabe wrote about this proximity in Le Vingt-Septième Livre (2006), comparing both neighbours' careers and the way their writings were met by critics and audiences.