Recognisably Houellebecq

Jeannette Winterson’s timely intervention in the Booker prize debate last month reminded us that ‘novels that last are language-based’. On that basis, Houellebecq’s 2010 Prix Goncourt-winning novel, The Map and the Territory, might have been a worthy candidate for the Booker 2011, had it been written in English.
 
In this latest offering by French literature’s preeminent provocateur, we follow the career of Jed Martin, a successful artist with no ambition to be one.