SOURCE: Green, Maria. Review of Extension du domaine de la lutte, by Michel Houellebecq. World Literature Today 69, no. 3 (summer 1995): 550.

In the following review, Green comments on Houellebecq's depiction of modern alienation in Extension du domaine de la lutte.

In his fourth novel, Michel Houellebecq deals with our modern mal du siècle, alienation. Can we still learn anything new on this worn-out topic, depicted, described, analyzed, turned inside out by the best artists, writers, philosophers, sociologists, and psychologists of our century? It seems that the author of Extension du domaine de la lutte can still display a new aspect of our modern ailment when he ushers the reader into the realm of computer science.

The narrator sets out to chart his own voyage of discovery in a novel about himself. Of course, this modern novel is a far cry from the sizzling passions of Wuthering Heights. The genre...