A powerful criticism of modern life by one of the most provocative and prophetic writers of our age. Florent-Claude Labrouste is dying of sadness. Despised by his girlfriend and on the brink of career failure, his last hope for relief comes in the form of a newly available antidepressant that alters the brain's release of serotonin. When he returns to the Normandy countryside in search of serenity, he instead finds a rural community left behind by globalisation and red-tape agricultural policies, with local farmers longing for an impossible return towhat they remember as a golden age. 'Despite its provocations, this is a novel of romantic and sorrowful ideas: Houellebecq as troubadour, singing lost loves' Rachel Kushner Michel Houellebecq has good claim to be the most interesting novelist of our times... Exhilarating in its nihilism, often very funny and always enjoyable' Evening Standard