'The Map and the Territory' by Michel Houellebecq

This starts off reading like a satire of the contemporary art world, but then turns into something of a mystery thriller. Like some of Houellebecq’s previous work, it is set in the near future but addresses the concerns of the present. France is recovering after a major financial crisis and has become almost totally dependent on tourism and, once again, agriculture. We follow the career of the artist Jed Martin as he pursues his life’s work "to give an objective description of the world."
Single-minded, somewhat naïve, but completely focused on his work, he wins international acclaim through various projects, before his painting starts to bring him incredible wealth. When he decides to paint the famous writer 'Michel Houellebecq', we are treated to a comic and self-deprecating portrait of a reclusive and world-weary man who, we are told, "smells bad, but less bad than a corpse".

As one would expect, there are extended riffs on a variety of topics –France and the French, euthanasia, socialism, art and commerce- but when the fictional 'Houellebecq' exits stage left (I won’t tell you how that happens, but it isn’t pretty), the novel seems to lose some momentum as it starts to follow a police investigation into the ‘Houellebecq’ case and also the final, introspective phase of Jed's career. Having spent much of his artistic life focusing on human labour (his most famous painting is called 'Bill Gates and Steve Jobs Discussing the Future of Information Technology: The Conversation at Palo Alto') Jed becomes a recluse and spends decades making films celebrating the triumph of vegetation over industrial objects. His work suggests that, in spite of all this human endeavour, plants and vegetation will endure to reclaim the world from humankind.

Houellebecq has been described as French literature's JG Ballard and it's probably fair to say that his key themes are existential ennui and the decline of the liberal west. He is at his best when he goes off on one and his forensic cynicism can be quite intoxicating; this, however, is probably his most mainstream work and not at all likely to scare the horses. 'The Map and the Territory' makes you think about the nature and purpose of work; Jed Martin's career is presented as an ideal and noble pursuit, a route to personal identity and fulfillment much more rewarding than travel, consumerism, love or parenthood. Other opinions, as they say, are available.

Michel Houellebecq - 'Atomised'

‘Atomised’ is one of those rare beasts in modern fiction: a novel with the cojones to take on big ideas and envisage a world in which the human condition has been completely redefined.
Set several decades in the future, it looks back on the lives of two half-brothers at the tail end of the 20th century. The cerebral Michel is a semi-autistic molecular biologist who has no understanding of (or need to indulge in) everyday human emotions, while Bruno is a frustrated free spirit, trapped in an overweight body, but still managing to enjoy a series of sexual adventures which he hopes will somehow give meaning to his life.
Both men are dysfunctional and, through their various shortcomings, western liberal society is put under the microscope. It would be fair to say that the author finds it wanting.

Houellebecq is the bête noire of the French left-liberal mainstream and ‘Atomised’ rips with contemptuous abandon into a number of his favourite targets: anthropology, psychoanalysis, New Age philosophy and organised religion (the author achieved a degree of notoriety for his outspoken views on Islam).
The big idea in ‘Atomised’ is that our society –in the early part of the 21st century- will undergo a startling metaphysical transformation. Genetics will offer us the opportunity to procreate without recourse to sex. Thereafter, human sexual activity –historically fraught with neuroses, anxiety, commodification and shame- will be downgraded.

In envisaging this utopia beyond the demise of the liberal west, Houellebecq is writing arguably the most powerful and prescient literature of our times.