"Michel Houellebecq has become a marketing product, a brand. His opinion is valuable; they want him to comment on everything... He appears as a wise man, strutting around, entertaining his audience with the act of an old sad clown. However, he still finds time to write." Journalist Denis Demonpion offers an updated and expanded version of the biography originally published in 2005. Michel Houellebecq is a significant writer, with his books published worldwide, and film, theater, and radio adaptations being created. His novels and poems are now studied in academic settings. Although he cultivates a reputation as an unpleasant and inaccessible companion, he is a laureate of the Goncourt Prize and recently became a recipient of the Legion of Honor. He is on familiar terms with the current French president and one of his predecessors. Demonpion considered all of this important: he supplemented the text with new insights and republished it. The Czech reader has been able to read Houellebecq's prose in translations since 2004. Only now is a book about him being published – about this contemporary French phenomenon.
