Atomised
1998
Literary fiction
Houellebecq's prophetic and provocative 1998 novel (published in the US as *The Elementary Particles*) traces the parallel lives of two half-brothers — Michel, a reclusive molecular biologist drifting toward asexuality, and Bruno, a sex-obsessed teacher drowning in his own frustrations — to deliver a cold, encyclopedic indictment of the sexual revolution. Houellebecq's central provocation is that the liberalisation of sexual norms produced a marketplace with winners and losers; that the family was the last vestige of communism in an otherwise individualistic society; and that some new metaphysical mutation, perhaps the abolition of sexual reproduction itself, may be required to escape the wreckage.