‘The Prix Goncourt committee took a record hour and a half to elect The Map and the Territory the winner of France’s highest literary honour … Readers … are unlikely to quibble with the decision. Houellebecq’s fifth book is not only his best for years but very likely his best ever, a serious novel about ageing and death which employs its author’s trademark wit towards some delicious exercises in satire and self parody… a challenging, mature and highly intelligent book’ Daily Telegraph
”[Houellebecq] has shown that the novel can still shock and disturb, still be the subject of passionate debate. We’re not talking about a reality television show or a film or a video game or a rap artist - these are cleverly constructed literary novels. All novelists everywhere have benefited from his audacity‘ William Boyd, Sunday Times
‘If the French had a prize for literary provocation, Michel Houellebecq would win in a walk…The Map and the Territory is a delight to read … vigorously, enjoyably un-French … [it] skewers the art world’s pretentious jargon and galloping mercantilism … The late novelist John Updike once summed up the conventional view of Houellebecq by deploring the French writer’s “thoroughgoing contempt for, and strident impatience with, humanity”. The Map and the Territory may force a revision of that judgment.’ Financial Times
‘A great read … Houellebecq, as both his writing and his infrequent forays into public life suggest, doesn’t seem like someone who takes much notice of what people tell him to do. Thank goodness’ Guardian
‘A dark master of invention…From the very first paragraph of this brilliant, often preposterous, Prix Goncourt winning novel, the reader can be in no doubt that they’re in the blistering bleak, darkly inventive grand massif that is Houellebecq land’ Evening Standard
‘The outlaw of French letters returns with an acerbic riff on art and celebrity … A very interesting writer - witty, wildly erudite, with a scattergun approach to the inanities that he sees all around him’ Douglas Kennedy, The Times
‘Houellebecq is an astonishing writer … The Map And The Territory is funny, shocking, brutal and unbearably poignant. It is, in the sense that the 18th century philosopher Edmund Burke meant it, sublime’ Scotland on Sunday
‘What on Earth is a French existentialist and winner of France’s top literary award, the Prix Goncourt, doing being reviewed here? He’s not commercial, doesn’t pander to any market, his prose is not always accessible, and certainly doesn’t always zip along. Turned off already? Well don’t be. If ever there was a novelist for our globally dysfunctional times it’s Michel Houellebecq …‘ Henry Sutton, The Mirror (4-star Book of the Week)
