Emmanuel Macron handed Thursday evening to the writer Michel Houellebecq the Legion of Honor during a ceremony at the Elysee, said Saturday the Presidency of the Republic. Michel Houellebecq was on the list of graduates from January 1st, at the rank of knight. Among his guests included his friend singer Jean-Louis Aubert, who put his poems to music, former President of the Republic Nicolas Sarkozy, Alain Finkielkraut or Frederic Beigbeder.
The head of state hailed in him "a romantic in a world become materialistic" and judged that his novels were not pessimistic but "full of hope" in a society whose pillars, like culture or religion, were weakened.
His latest novel, a cardboard. The 63-year-old novelist, one of the most translated French writers, made a hit with his latest book, "Sérotonine" (Flammarion). Dark and poignant, this seventh novel plunges its readers into the heart of rural and suffering France. Written months before the appearance of "yellow vests", the novel seems to have anticipated this movement.
A terrible child of French literature, a visionary and controversial writer, Michel Houellebecq had not published anything since "Soumission", published four years ago, the very day of the attack on Charlie Hebdo. In all editions, this book has sold nearly 800,000 copies in the French-speaking world.