“With his pinched face and shambling gait, he is, to say the least, an incongruous figure; he looks more like a local wino than a world-famous man of letters. But [Michel] Houellebecq, 47, is the nearest thing to a literary superstar France has produced in recent years. His books have been translated into 36 languages and recent film deals have made him a multi-millionaire… [But in France,] he is often depicted as a calculating and manipulative operator who courts controversy to boost sales. This is also the argument of two recent biographies of Houellebecq.”