Michel Houellebecq is read about 2,135 times a day, in 65 languages.
A typical day, 30 days to 15 October 2026
The middle day of the days counted, so one week of news cannot move it. The line under it is the last 390 days, one point a day.
Something wrong?He writes novels that land like grenades in the culture - Islam, sex, despair, the slow collapse of meaning in Western life - and the fury and fascination follow in equal measure. France calls him both its greatest living writer and its most dangerous.
A life in dates
Also in Deutsch
Photos 8
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Michel Houellebecq no Fronteiras do Pensamento Porto Alegre 2016 (30895029365) (cropped)
2008.06.09. Krystyna Rodowska and Michel Houellebecq Fot Mariusz Kubik
2008.06.09. Michel Houellebecq and Ewa Wielezynska and Beata Stasinska.jpg?width=1200)
2008.06.09. Michel Houellebecq Fot Mariusz Kubik 01 (cropped)
2008.06.09. Michel Houellebecq Fot Mariusz Kubik 01
2008.06.09. Michel Houellebecq Fot Mariusz Kubik 02
2008.06.09. Michel Houellebecq Fot Mariusz Kubik 03
2008.06.09. Michel Houellebecq Fot Mariusz Kubik 04In their own words 7
, You get used to terrorist attacks. France will hold on. The French will hold on, without even needing a “sursaut national,” a national pushback reflex.
But isn't this an illusion? We know that men, given the chance to choose for themselves, will all make exactly the same same choice.
I was very shocked that it was called a theory. It's not a theory, it's a fact.
Awards
In their orbit
About this person
Born Michel Thomas on 26 February 1956, he started with a biographical essay on H. P. Lovecraft before publishing his first novel Whatever in 1994. Atomised arrived in 1998 and brought international fame and immediate controversy. An offhand remark about Islam during the 2001 publicity tour for Platform landed him in court on charges of inciting racial hatred; he was cleared, then left for Ireland for several years before returning to France. The Map and the Territory won the Prix Goncourt in 2010. Submission, published in 2015, sparked fresh accusations of plagiarism - later deemed inadmissible - and was called both prophetic and inflammatory for its depiction of Islam. Annihilation followed in 2022. He has called himself "probably islamophobic" and been labeled the undisputed star and enfant terrible of modern French literature.
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