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Article: Michel houellebecq: French novelist for our times.
- Article from:
- Contemporary Review
- Article date:
- July 1, 2003
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2003 Contemporary Review Company Ltd. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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THE controversial French writer Michel Houellebecq has probably initiated more acres of newsprint than any other writer, living or dead. In the process, he has been hailed as a prescient genius and dismissed as a rabid extremist, but almost always recognised as a novelist of great power and originality.
The last of his three novels, Platform, published shortly before al-Qaeda's attack on the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center on 11 September 2001, predicted that 'never, for as long as Islam exists, will peace reign in the world'. The novel features an attack by Islamic fundamentalists on a tourist resort in the Far East which reads uncannily like a prediction ...