'The mischief-making enfant terrible of new-wave French fiction' Independent

Just thirty, with a well-paid job, no love life and a terrible attitude, the anti-hero of this grim, funny novel smokes four packs of cigarettes a day and writes weird animal stories in his spare time. A computer programmer by day, he is tolerably content, until he's packed off with a colleague - the sexually-frustrated Raphael Tisserand - to train provincial civil servants in the use of a new computer system Houellebecq's first novel was a smash hit in France, expressing the misanthropic voice of a generation. Like A Confederacy of Dunces, Houellebecq's bitter, sarcastic and exasperated narrator vociferously expresses his frustration and disgust with the world.

"Funny, terrifying and nauseating" - Independent

"The balance between philosophy and narrative detail is perfectly judged; the book slips down easily like a bad oyster. As is the nature of such things, it is grimly comic" - Guardian

"Le grand fromage du jour" - The Face

"It could well turn out to be a cult here too ... astonishing" - Time Out

"Snappy, bite-sized, and often very funny. Is it European exhaustion? Is it the soul of man under late capitalism? Millenial gloom? Post-Christian despair? Is it the death of love? Whatever. But Houellebecq describes it perfectly" - Literary Review

"This boy needs serious therapy. He may be beyond help" - Washington Post

"The mischief-making enfant terrible of new-wave French fiction" - Independent

"Houellebecq captures precisely the cynical disillusionment of disaffected youth" - Booklist