With “Destroy” the eighth novel by the French scandal author Michel Houellebecq is published in German today. The novel was only announced shortly beforehand, which sparked speculation regarding its content. The original was published on January 7th, exactly seven years following “Submission”, a novel in which Houellebecq outlined the introduction of Sharia law in France in 2022 as a future scenario.
On the day “Submission” was published, an Islamist-motivated terrorist attack was carried out on the editors of the Paris news magazine “Charlie Hebdo”, the cover of which was dedicated to Houellebecq’s novel. In “Destroy” the novelist dares to look into the future once more. At the end of 2026, a fake video appeared on the Internet in which the French Minister for Economic Affairs, Bruno Juges, was beheaded.
The plot revolves around Minister Paul Raison’s office manager, who, in addition to the riddle surrounding the video, followed by mysterious acts of international sabotage, has to contend with private problems. What Houellebecq begins here as a political thriller soon turns into a social novel that, as is often the case, illuminates the needs of figures from the upper middle class in the present and the near future, which is characterized by consumption.
Michel Houellebecq’s new diagnosis of the present
Late romance
While Bruno Juges is the second man next to a television star in the election campaign for the presidency of 2027, Paul gets closer to his estranged siblings following his father’s stroke and revives the broken marriage with his wife Prudence.
The storyline around the acts of sabotage disappears in favor of an almost romantic portrayal of a late marital happiness, unusual for the provocateur Houellebecq, even if Paul becomes seriously ill in the course of the story.
Speculation regarding the end of a career
Since its publication in France, a sentence in the acknowledgment at the end of the book has caused speculation. It says: “Fortunately, I have just come to a positive realization; for me it is time to stop. ”In view of the often dazzling and contradicting statements of the author, it is unclear whether this is actually hiding the announcement of the end of my career.
