THIS IS ONE HELL OF A STORY. IT’S JUST NOT HERS TO TELL.
When failed writer June Hayward witnesses her rival Athena Liu die in a freak accident, she sees her opportunity… and takes it. So what if it means stealing Athena’s final manuscript? So what if it means ‘borrowing’ her identity? And so what if the first lie is only the beginning… Finally, June has the fame she always deserved. But someone is about to expose her… What happens next is entirely everyone else's fault.
‘Breathtakingly clever on jealousy, talent, success, and who gets to tell which story’ Elizabeth Day
‘Hard to put down. Harder to forget’ Stephen King
‘Hugely entertaining’ Observer
'An extended meditation on human frailty and the lack of spirituality in the Western world . . . Houellebecq displays compassion and empathy, and a belief in the redemptive power of love.' - New Statesman
'The most important novelist to have been publishing in all of Europe over the past three decades' - The Sunday Times
It is 2027. France is in a state of economic decline and moral decay. As the country plunges into a closely-fought presidential campaign, the French state falls victim to a series of mysterious and unsettling cyberattacks. The sophisticated nature of the attacks leaves the best computer scientists at the DGSI - the French counter-terrorism agency - scrambling for answers. An advisor to the country's Finance Minister, Paul Raison is close to the heart of government. His wife Prudence is a Treasury official, while his father Édouard, now retired, has spent his career working for the DGSI. When Édouard has a stroke, his children have an opportunity to repair their strained relationships, as they determine to free their father from the medical centre where he is wasting away.
Michel Houellebecq's Annihilation reveals new sides to his writing, adding compassion and tenderness to the emotions of rage and irony that have powered both him and his earlier works to international fame.
Translated from the French by Shaun Whiteside