Annihilation, an excoriation of contemporary France as a terminally ill society, bears all the trademark features of a Michel Houellebecq novel: a depressed white middle-aged anti-hero, Paul; sociological musings about the sorry state of his sex life, his marriage and heterosexual coupledom more generally; disquisitions on the spiritual hollowness brought about by consumerism and neoliberalism; and finally, a few genuinely funny sordid bits, such as when Paul visits a prostitute and realises that the young woman administering a blowjob to him in semi-darkness is in fact his niece.

The narrative starts strongly. The year is 2027, and the French president – either Macron himself or an unnamed stand-in – sees his chances of re-election seriously challenged by Marine Le Pen and the National Rally. Meanwhile, an unnamed group of right-wing anarcho-primitivists plans a series of terrorist attacks. However, these two narrative strands, even if they receive resolutions, serve mostly as a backdrop for the dilemma facing Paul: whether he should continue his futile existence as a bourgeois living through the last days of Western civilisation, or perhaps choose the more dignified option of outright annihilation. 

The novel harbours maximalist ambitions and has its moments of brilliance, but it ends up wallowing in dejection and sentimentality. Paul – his last name, Raison, gives it away – is yet another Houellebecquian representative of the old order on its last legs. A government apparatchik and personal adviser