法國文壇的大消息！
眾望所歸！以破紀錄一分半鐘敲板定案
壞痞子韋勒貝克榮獲二○一○年龔固爾文學獎
被譽為當年度法國最好的一本小說、作者最成熟的一部作品
生命，代表著什麼意義，他拒絕評論。
受害者的頭部完好，被整齊地割下，擱置在壁爐前的一張扶手椅上，暗綠色絨布椅墊上形成一小攤血；面對面的沙發上，放著一隻大黑狗的頭顱，也是被整齊地割下。餘下的就是大殺戮，無法形容的殘暴血腥，一塊塊一條條的肉散布在地上。
人和狗頭顱的臉上卻沒有僵住恐懼的表情，而是無法置信和憤怒。散落一地交織的人狗肉塊之間，留了一條五十公分寬乾淨的通道，直通到壁爐，裡面疊滿還殘帶著肉絲的骨頭。
這個可怖的兇殺案件，受害者是個頗有知名度的作家，他生前是個孤獨的人，離過兩次婚，有個很久沒見的孩子，和家人十年來完全斷絕聯絡，也沒有情人。唯一一個曾進入命案現場的訪客，是一名身價超過千萬歐元的藝術家，傑德．馬丹。傑德最後一幅畫作，正是死者的畫像：「米榭．韋勒貝克，作家」，這幅價值九十萬歐元的高貴名畫卻消失了。
從小缺乏親情、愛情又不順遂的傑德，與向來憤世忌俗的孤僻作家韋勒貝克，原本毫無關係的兩人，因一篇文章、一幅畫像牽扯出兩個社會邊緣人的朦朧情誼。在這個冷漠的現代社會裡，一種悲傷的情緒緩緩蔓延，或許，愛是可能的。

Dans une France assez proche de la nôtre, un homme s’engage dans la carrière universitaire. Peu motivé par l’enseignement, il s’attend à une vie ennuyeuse mais calme, protégée des grands drames historiques. Cependant les forces en jeu dans le pays ont fissuré le système politique jusqu’à provoquer son effondrement. Cette implosion sans soubresauts, sans vraie révolution, se développe comme un mauvais rêve.<br /><br />Le talent de l’auteur, sa force visionnaire nous entraînent sur un terrain ambigu et glissant ; son regard sur notre civilisation vieillissante fait coexister dans ce roman les intuitions poétiques, les effets comiques, une mélancolie fataliste.<br /><br />Ce livre est une saisissante fable politique et morale.<br /><br />

An international literary phenomenon, The Elementary Particles is a frighteningly original novel–part Marguerite Duras and part Bret Easton Ellis-that leaps headlong into the malaise of contemporary existence.
Bruno and Michel are half-brothers abandoned by their mother, an unabashed devotee of the drugged-out free-love world of the sixties. Bruno, the older, has become a raucously promiscuous hedonist himself, while Michel is an emotionally dead molecular biologist wholly immersed in the solitude of his work. Each is ultimately offered a final chance at genuine love, and what unfolds is a brilliantly caustic and unpredictable tale.
Translated from the French by Frank Wynne.

Half-brothers Michel and Bruno have a mother in common but little else. Michel is a molecular biologist, a thinker and idealist, a man with no erotic life to speak of and little in the way of human society. Bruno, by contrast, is a libertine, though more in theory than in practice, his endless lust is all too rarely reciprocated. Both are symptomatic members of our atomised society, where religion has given way to shallow 'new age' philosophies and love to meaningless sexual connections. Atomised (Les Particules elementaires) tells the stories of the two brothers, but the real subject of the novel is in its dismantling of contemporary society and its assumptions, in its political incorrectness, and its caustic and penetrating asides on everything from anthropology to the problem pages of girls' magazines. A dissection of modern lives and loves. By turns funny, acid, infuriating, didactic, touching and visceral.

A controversial, intelligent, and mordantly funny new novel from France's most famous living literary figure
It's 2022. François is bored. He's a middle-aged lecturer at the New Sorbonne University and an expert on J. K. Huysmans, the famous nineteenth-century Decadent author. But François's own decadence is considerably smaller in scale. He sleeps with his students, eats microwave dinners, rereads Huysmans, queues up YouPorn.
Meanwhile, it's election season. And although Francois feels "about as political as a bath towel," things are getting pretty interesting. In an alliance with the Socialists, France's new Islamic party sweeps to power. Islamic law comes into force. Women are veiled, polygamy is encouraged, and François is offered an irresistible academic advancement--on the condition that he convert to Islam.
Adam Gopnik in The New Yorker has said of Submission that "Houellebecq is not merely a satirist but--more unusually--a sincere satirist, genuinely saddened by the absurdities of history and the madnesses of mankind." Michel Houellebecq's new book may be satirical and melancholic, but it is also hilarious, a comic masterpiece by one of France's great novelists.

《基本粒子》是一部临床的，感人的小说，它既揪你的头发，也催人沔下。乌勒贝克通过两个同父异母兄弟的不同经历，描绘了美国式文明、特别是性解放的观念在法国兴起和衰落的过程，它通过主人公或自杀或精神分裂等悲惨结局，告诉人们，恣意放纵和穷奢极欲并不能给人带来真正的快乐，而只能使人倍感空虚，最终走向死亡。
《基本粒子》在艺术形式上有独特的创新之处。它的叙述虽然采取了交叉和倒叙的形式，但是条理清楚，词句流畅，显然已经摆脱了现代主义小说模糊朦胧、扑朔迷离的一面。它对自然科学的重视，令人想起左拉的作品，这也是乌勒贝克被称为新自然主义小说家的原因。书中的议论与描写交叉或重叠，是受法国19世纪著名作家萨德侯爵的影响；小说从现在写到未来的2009年以后，又可以看出凡尔纳风格的痕迹。总起来说，《基本粒子》吸取了以往许多有益的创作经验，在科技迅猛发展、思想观念日新月异的今天，形成了自己的特色。

布呂諾與米榭是同母異父的兄弟，因在不同的環境成長而有不同的個性。布呂諾從小在學校被欺凌扭曲了他的人群倫理，長大後生性浪漫的他趕上70年代的性解放社會風氣，恰好給他無盡的滋養，但他終其一生的頭銜只有失職的老師、失敗的作家；而弟弟米榭有相對安定的際遇，思想觀念與哥哥迥異，他對情感絕緣，致力於智識的追求，後來成為傑出的分子生物學家。
兩兄弟有著熱情與冷漠、強迫性衝動與性冷感、藝術浪漫與科學理智、縱慾悖德與宗教道德等之間的對比，但都同時患上了「無力去愛」的現代文明病……

ATOMISED (VINTAGE TWIN)
by Michel Houellebecq
Destined to become a cult book... a genuine page-turner - Observer
Description of book
Half-brothers Michel and Bruno have a mother in common but little else. Michel is a molecular biologist, a thinker and idealist, a man with no erotic life to speak of and little in the way of human society. Bruno, by contrast, is a libertine, though more in theory than in practice, his endless lust is all too rarely reciprocated. Both are symptomatic members of our atomised society, where religion has given way to shallow 'new age' philosophies and love to meaningless sexual connections. Atomised (Les Particules elementaires) tells the stories of the two brothers, but the real subject of the novel is in its dismantling of contemporary society and its assumptions, in its political incorrectness, and its caustic and penetrating asides on everything from anthropology to the problem pages of girls' magazines. A dissection of modern lives and loves. By turns funny, acid, infuriating, didactic, touching and visceral.