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Platform

By Michel Houellebecq, Frank Wynne (Translator)

(27)

| Paperback | 9780099437888

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Book Description

Michel Renault is a human void. Following the death of the father he barely knew, he endures his civil ser-
vice job while eking out an existence of prepackaged pleasure, hollow friendships, TV dinners, and pornography. On a group holiday in Thailand, however, he meets the shyly compelling ValériContinue

Michel Renault is a human void. Following the death of the father he barely knew, he endures his civil ser-
vice job while eking out an existence of prepackaged pleasure, hollow friendships, TV dinners, and pornography. On a group holiday in Thailand, however, he meets the shyly compelling Valérie, who soon pursues an agenda that Michel himself could never have thought possible: his own humanization.

Back in Paris, they plunge into an affair that strays into S&M, public sex, and partner swapping, even as they devise a scheme to save Valérie’s ailing travel company by capitalizing on the only trade Michel has seen flourish in the Third World. Before long, he quits his job, and their business model for “sex tourism” is gradually implemented. But when they return to Thailand, where Michel’s philosophy will be put into practice, he discovers that sex is neither the most consuming nor dangerous of passions . . .

From a suburbanized West crippled by hate crime to an East subsumed by materialism, Michel Houellebecq explores—with characteristic provocativeness, but also with surprising tenderness—the emotions that seem most resilient to any influence: love and hate. Platform is, as Anita Brookner has written, “a brilliant novel, casting a prescient eye on the abuses and inequalities that lead to wider trouble.”

Critics

  • The sum of private parts

    Platform by Michel Houellebecq Heinemann, 320pp, £12.99 Michel Houellebecq is the first French novelist since Albert Camus to find a wide readership outside France. His novel Les particules élementaires, published in this country two years ago as Ato ... (read full critics)

    guardian.co.uk published on Sat, 25 Sep 2010

  • French kisses... and the rest

    Platform by Michel Houellebecq Heinemann £12.99, pp362 Most contemporary novels are distinctly forgettable. They are as permanent as clouds. But the novels of Michel Houellebecq have an important difference. For a start, they are wilfully obscene. Th ... (read full critics)

    guardian.co.uk published on Sat, 25 Sep 2010

5 Reviews

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  • Platform

    Houellececq has an intriguing way of narrating normal events, I found this book inspirational and delightful

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    A Lailapace said on Feb 13, 2012 | Add your feedback

  • Disturbing in a good way

    The main character is very opinionated, maybe even too much. Other than that it is a great book that amuses and shocks at the same time. It left me with a sense of loss.

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    Phunph said on Sep 13, 2010 | Add your feedback

  • Like Atomised

    I read this because I'd read Atomised, and I think I liked it better. He's a good imaginative Writer and hard-edged, what else has he done? Ah, I remember now, and I tried it and I didn't like it, sci-fi stuff or something... nah! With this, he is quite clever, and the business ventures that are evo ... (continue)

    I read this because I'd read Atomised, and I think I liked it better. He's a good imaginative Writer and hard-edged, what else has he done? Ah, I remember now, and I tried it and I didn't like it, sci-fi stuff or something... nah! With this, he is quite clever, and the business ventures that are evolved in the story are quite believable.

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    mrpeterryan said on Jan 15, 2010 | Add your feedback

  • Provocative like I expected--but then, the cover gave that away.

    Is this helpful?

    Leebeck said on Feb 29, 2008 | Add your feedback

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