Michel Houellebecq (French pronunciation: [miʃɛl wɛlˈbɛk]) (born Michel Thomas), born 26 February 1958 (birth certificate) or 1956 on the French island of Réunion, is a controversial and award-winning French novelist. To admirers he is a writer in the tradition of literary provocation that reaches back to the Marquis de Sade and Baudelaire; to detractors he is a peddler of sleaze and shock. Having written poetry and a biography of the horror writ...
more
Michel Houellebecq (French pronunciation: [miʃɛl wɛlˈbɛk]) (born Michel Thomas), born 26 February 1958 (birth certificate) or 1956 on the French island of Réunion, is a controversial and award-winning French novelist. To admirers he is a writer in the tradition of literary provocation that reaches back to the Marquis de Sade and Baudelaire; to detractors he is a peddler of sleaze and shock. Having written poetry and a biography of the horror writer H P Lovecraft he brought out his first novel Extension du domaine de la lutte in 1994. Les particules élémentaires followed in 1998 and Plateform , in 2001. After a publicity tour for this book, which led to his being taken to court for inciting racial hatred, he went to Ireland to write. He currently lives in Spain.
The son of Lucie Ceccaldi, an Algerian-born French doctor, and her husband, René Thomas, a ski instructor and mountain guide, Houellebecq was born on the French island of Réunion. He also lived in Algeria from the age of five...
less
