Where is the British Houellebecq?

The British literary scene has no one like the French novelist Michel Houellebecq. We are worse off for it. His novels combine a startling number of blowjobs with beautiful writing about God, religion and love. The British publishing industry would never allow someone who is white, male, very heterosexual, sides with Christianity against Islam, writes about the male condition and, perhaps most controversially, takes down modern feminism.

Perhaps they think Brits just aren’t good at dealing with abstracts. It’s true that the Anglo-Saxon mind prefers to stick with everyday practicalities; we struggle with the existential truths in the likes of Atomised . The book was written in 2002, and the first page opens with the following description of the situation faced by the protagonist (and by