Even in translation, Michel Houellebecq’s novels are witty, mad (particularly in translation) and sickeningly funny. I’m reading his latest, The Map and the Territory, which won the Prix Goncourt last year. As expected, author and characters are superb in their disgust with and contempt for the world in general, and especially France, art, tourism and gastronomy, all of them hideously related. The sex and atrocities have been rationed, though; the writing has new polish and finesse; and a shocking sympathy has crept into the proceedings.
Even if it did not win the Man Booker Prize after I backed it at 8-1, I thought Stephen Kelman’s Pigeon English was miraculous.
I’m not saying that Sam Leith’s You Talkin’ To Me? is brilliant, or that it should do well this Christmas, and nor am I about to end this sentence with a but.
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