Review of Houellebecq's Platform
Michel Houellebecq's latest novel, Platform, is now available in English translation. It generated intellectual controversy in France (which isn't really that hard to do) for the main character's endorsement of sex tourism and hostility toward Islam. Jason Cowley in the Observer gives it a rave review. "[Houellebecq's novels] are also full of provocative, often comic attacks against left-liberal orthodoxies, against Islam, against capitalism and against any idea of progress. Reading Houellebecq (pronounced Wellbeck) is like being caught up in a tropical storm: you are blown away by the ferocity of his imagination. Like the great Louis-Ferdinand Céline, whom he closely resembles, Houellebecq is a grand, scabrous renunciator."
