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Heartbreaking scenes: Annihilation, by Michel Houellebecq, reviewed

Set in 2027, with France in a state of economic and moral decay, Houellebecq’s deeply affecting novel is really a meditation on love and death and the way we treat the dying

21 September 2024

9:00 AM

21 September 2024

9:00 AM

Annihilation Michel Houellebecq, translated by Shaun Whiteside

Picador, pp.527, 22

Michel Houellebecq’s ninth and longest novel, anéantir, was published in France at the beginning of January 2022 with an initial print run of 300,000 copies. Translations into Italian, German and Spanish appeared a few weeks later. Only now, though, is it available in English, a belatedness all the more regrettable because, like several of Houellebecq’s novels, it is set a little in the future (Submission, for example, foreseeing the islamisation of France, was published in 2015 and set in 2022).

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