Platform - Hardcover

Michel Houellebecq; Frank Wynne

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0375414622 ISBN 13: 9780375414626

Publisher: Knopf, 2003

Synopsis

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.”

About this title

From the Back Cover:

“Howard Stern meets Albert Camus in this novel of sex and alienation . . . Houellebecq has sharp observations about ennui in the Western world and rage in the Muslim one.”
–Kyle Smith, People

“Astute, graceful, sexually preoccupied . . . Houellebecq rewards with glimpses through his particularly keen lens.”
–Arthur Hirsch, The Baltimore Sun

“A novel at once brilliant, charming, puzzling, annoying and sometimes downright repulsive . . . The work of a highly talented writer.”
–Jean Charbonneau, Cleveland Plain Dealer

“The talented, cynical Houellebecq blasts Western culture and Islam in his odd, subversive entertainment.”
–Carlo Wolff, The Boston Globe

“Blunt, arrogant, coolly detached, ultra-sophisticated, impeccably and simply presented, intellectually self-assured and very self-conscious . . . This is the real thing, the kind of novel that ends up in the canon.”
–Michel Basilières, The Toronto Star

About the Author:

Michel Houellebecq’s The Elementary Particles, an international best-seller, won the prestigious Prix Novembre in France as well as the lucrative International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. He lives in Ireland.

About this edition

• Publisher: Knopf
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0375414622
• ISBN 13: 9780375414626
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 272