Picador acquires Houellebecq’s Annihilation translated by Whiteside

Picador has acquired Michel Houellebecq’s novel Anéantir (Annihilation), translated from the original French by Shaun Whiteside.

UK and Commonwealth rights, excluding Canada, were acquired by Ravi Mirchandani, editor-in-chief, from Editions Flammarion. Picador will publish Annihilation in hardback in September 2024; Farrar, Straus & Giroux will publish in North America.

The publisher says the novel reveals both “a new level of ambition and new sides to [Houellebecq’s] writing, as he addresses faith and family, love and mortality, and adds compassion and tenderness to the emotions of rage, disgust and irony that have powered his earlier novels – and he himself – to international fame".

Its synopsis reads: “It is 2027. France is in a state of economic decline and moral decay. Unemployment, rural poverty and income inequality have reached unprecedented levels. As the country plunges into a closely-fought presidential campaign, the French state falls victim to a series of mysterious and unsettling cyber attacks. A video posted on the internet depicts the guillotining of Finance Minister Bruno Juge. As an adviser to Minister Juge, Paul Raison is close to the heart of government.

“His wife Prudence is a Treasury official, while his father Édouard, now retired, has spent his career working for the DGSI – the French counter-terrorism agency. Paul’s personal life is as troubled and as atomised as that of the nation – his marriage has become strained, while his ties with his siblings are distant. But when Édouard suffers a stroke, Paul has an opportunity to repair his relationship with them, as they determine to free their father from the medical centre where he is wasting away.”

Mirchandani said: “We at Picador are delighted to be publishing Michel Houellebecq for the first time, with his deeply thought-provoking and moving new novel. As Simon Heffer observed in the Daily Telegraph when Anéantir was published in French last year: "Michel Houellebecq’s new book proves he is one of the world’s greatest novelists." We are happy indeed to welcome him to Picador.