SOURCE: Brookner, Anita. “Prize-Winning Novels from France.” Spectator 282, no. 8891 (2 January 1999): 35.

In the following excerpt, Brookner discusses Houellebecq's controversial portrayal of sexual excesses and cloning in Les Particules élémentaires.

The disgusting and depraved Les Particules élémentaires by Michel Houellebecq led to the author being suspended from a literary journal on grounds of offences against good taste. (The publicity did him no harm at all.) I liked this, though it is undoubtedly obscene, but, more than obscene, despairing. The sexual revolution to which the protagonist, Bruno, contributes, vigorously though unappealingly, is held responsible for the disillusionment which overtakes its adherents in middle age and beyond. The answer, says Houellebecq, or his other protagonist, Michel, is genetic modification. In future reproduction will be achieved by cloning. It was the eugenic implications of this idea which so offended the authorities, so that to have admitted this novel would be seen...