The release of each of Michel Houellebecq‘s novels is an event. With Anéantir, the eighth, the most famous of contemporary French writers continues his portrait of the time.

Much more optimistic

“Anéantir“, the new novel by Michel Houellebecq was released a few weeks ago in bookstores. A book kept secret as long as possible until the day of its publication. 730 bound pages for this new work, much more optimistic in writing than one could have imagined. The message of the book: “Love saves“.

Between a thriller and a love story

This novel is set in 2027, and the world is confronted with strange attacks, pseudo-attacks at first, videos broadcast on the net. On one of them, for example, we witness the beheading – with a guillotine – of the French Minister of Finance, Bruno Juge. The latter is very much alive, the video was filmed with impressive special effects. There will be a gradation in these attacks, first bogus, then real without causing any victims, then five hundred dead at once. All the police in the world are perplexed: it is impossible to understand the claims of the terrorists, nor their motivations, which seem contradictory and can be attributed just as much to the far right as to radical environmentalists, or even to other groups. So many tracks that will be diluted over the pages to focus around Paul and his wife Prudence, as if Paul’s field of vision focused on himself, his fears, his couple and his dreams.

Beautiful pages of litterature

There are beautiful pages on literature, Paul begins to read all the adventures of Sherlock Holmes, and he observes the nature, the beauty and the color of the trees. Annihilate is a flamboyant novel of desire, love and death. The sentences envelop us, warm us, we can laugh, cry. The characters are tender, they also have flesh, we could devour them as we devour this book which sometimes resembles us so much.