Self parody of a writer by a writer

The Map and the Territory
By Michael Houellebecq
Vintage £8.99

Michel Houellebecq, the great provocateur of French letters, won the Prix Goncourt in 2010 for this fine novel, at the heart of which is a fictionalised version of the author himself.

When artist Jed Martin emerges from a Parisian garret to exhibit his latest series of paintings, he asks "Michel Houellebecq" to contribute an essay for the catalogue. The collaboration goes smoothly – at least until the famous novelist is gruesomely murdered.

Houellebecq's work has been criticised for its perceived misanthropy, but any hate in this book is directed inward, in what amounts to a compelling exercise in literary masochism. (The Houellebecq character is a snivelling, lank-haired creature, a "tired old decadent".)

His self-parody is so corrosive that it works its way into the texture of his prose: Houellebecq italicises certain phrases – "anthropologically impious"; "a feeling of friendship" — as if to upbraid himself for lapses into pomposity or clich`E9.

After the author's fictional alter ego meets his sticky end, The Map and the Territory morphs from postmodern satire into a Simenon-style police procedural, and becomes rather less interesting.

But the bittersweet coda, which depicts an elderly Jed, successful yet haunted by "the ghost of a thwarted happiness", is beautifully done. One might have expected Houellebecq to write a wry, clever, ruthlessly self-lacerating novel; the surprise here is that he has written — perhaps in spite of himself — a profoundly affecting one. The Independent

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