French author's swansong proves conservatives create great art too

Purportedly his final novel, Michel Houellebecq's Annihilation is a wide-ranging vehicle for communicating his views from religion to death

- Clement Yong

ANNIHILATION By Michel Houellebecq, translated by Shaun Whiteside Fiction/Picador/Paperback/ 526 pages/$34.95

To read Michel Houellebecq is often to put one's value system to the test. Both in and out of his books, France's most famous living novelist has been no stranger to controversy.

He is an unabashed Islamophobe, as well as a vocal supporter of former United States president Donald Trump and Brexit. In his 2019 work Serotonin, an unfaithful wife is put through some frankly disgusting scenarios, of the sort that feels vengeful given Houellebecq's own high-profile divorces.

Annihilation, purportedly the 68-year-old's final novel, is, by contrast, a very straight-laced, even tame, affair.

His conservatism still underpins everything, but it is really a wide-ranging vehicle for communicating the author's views on everything from religion to death to the futility of politics.

In many moments, he makes sure readers know he has earned the right to keep their attention, winding his way through the quotidian to seek cautious revelation.

Cruising prose brilliantly combines deeply personal fears and sweeping societal critique. It is the swansong of an author who, finally, deserves to be ranked among the greats.