Platform

After the murder of his father, Michel, a French bureaucrat, goes on a package holiday to Thailand. Solitary and cynical, he is dismissive of much that others in his group find important but he does take one thing seriously: sex, which alone compensates him for the miseries of life. His matter-of-fact acceptance of sexual tourism and his enthusiastic (and often graphically described) participation in sexual activities, aided by drink and Viagra, underline the sordidness of the industry. On his return to France, he keeps in contact with fellow traveller Valerie and, much against expectation, finds happiness - and an even more active sex life - with her. She works for the company which organized their holiday, but is soon head-hunted with her boss by a tour business looking to expand. Michel's suggestion that certain tour resorts should specialize in adult sex tourism is welcomed as a new direction for the tourist industry and leads to a return visit to Thailand, which ends in disaster. Michel Hoellebecq paints a bleak picture of countries like Thailand that cannot survive industrially and need Western investment; we in the West, he says, 'have created a system in which it has become impossible to live; and we continue to export it'. Winner of the 2002 IMPAC Award, Hoellebecq has an unsparing eye for the follies and horrors of our world, and his descriptions of an alienated and crumbling society in which violence and crime on the streets of Paris find their mirror image in the emotional violence of casual sex, and of the tourism which destroys the very thing it seeks, will shock but give the reader much to think about. (Kirkus UK)