(Elisabetta Stefanelli) (ANSA) - ROME, DEC 30 - MICHEL HOUELLEBECQ, 'ANNIENTARE' (LaNave di Teseo, page 743, Euro 23.00. Translation by Milena ZemiraCiccimarra).
Speaking of 'annihilating' at the last Turin Book Fair, Michel Houellebecq had said only a few words: '' It is too complicated to say what it is about. It will be a depressing book. "To tell the truth more than a depressing book, this splendid novel just translated by Milena Zemira Ciccimarra (again thanks to the translators and their work) for La Nave di Teseo by Elisabetta Sgarbi, and in bookstores from January 7, seems like a masterpiece We read it in preview following the strict rules of embargo which require that we be able to talk about it only from 30 December - even here the end of the year - and which have also been violated in France where pirated copies circulated precisely through that Internet network that is one of the '' demons '' of the account.
The characters who populate it, knowingly or unknowingly, come to terms with death. Perhaps self-self has somehow reached its final moment and there is no mystery: '' I have come to a positive conclusion: it is the time to stop, '' he writes at the end of the book.
Here death is expected, premature, brought in as a gift, pursued, imposed. They are, indeed we are, all '' on death row '' that grips, perhaps to the point of annihilating our daily lives. A great novel of current affairs, obviously dystopian in the gaze on that near future just around the corner apparently very distant yet all the signs are already here among us, to which this great writer has accustomed us with his lucidly ruthless style.
'Annihilate' is the final chapter of a society so fluid that it only makes sense when it ends.
The ingredients are all in a plot, and here Houellebecq harreason, too complicated to tell also because it is full of mysteries and mystifications, of twists and turns, of dramas and even of great, silent, happiness. The novel of a painful humanity that '' could simply no longer enter into contact and perform the essential gestures, those that allow the human species to reproduce, those that also allow us, at times, to be 'happy' ''.
Everything happens within a year. We are between November and December, Christmas and New Year's Eve of 2027 is celebrated and until the end of October. Just one year to follow the life of a few characters who intertwine, Paul Raison in the first place, assistant, indeed confidant, of the French Minister of Economy and Finance, Bruno Juge, then engaged in a ruthless and surreal electoral campaign, in which the writer spares no one . Paul is the son of Edouard, a mysterious official who has a decisive weight in his life and in the book, and tries to clarify a series of cryptic messages that first appear on the Internet, then gradually go on to violently mess up the life of the country. Instead of the world in a continuing sense of global danger.
There are no issues that arise in the contemporary debate that the writer does not address. And here Houellebecq also gives a little thought to Italy: '' for some years - he writes - the boats of African migrants headed to Europe had given up on reaching Sicily, since docking was made impossible by the boats of the Italian navy ''.
Public life, which is essentially political, and private life, which is essentially erotic, once again run parallel in the pages of Houellebecq, in the search for a moment of lost happiness that fleetingly belongs to both the highest forms of expression of homo sapiens.
'' Love is not exactly a profession but also the profession is necessary '', as well as the passion for music (Nirvana and Radiohead) or cinema (Matrix or The Lord of the Rings), which characterize the characters.
Splinters of feelings - love, family, friends - in a collective devastation in which the Internet has a decisive weight for the writer and terror runs on the net: '' The worst thing was that if the terrorists' goal was to annihilate the world he knew it, to annihilate the 'modern' world, he could not blame him at all ''.
Yet this too is basically a form of love.
(HANDLE).
