Provocative French author returns with ‘yellow vest’ novel

Provocative French author Michel Houellebecq’s (pic) highly anticipated new novel, in which he appears to foretell the “yellow vest” revolt, looked set to become an instant bestseller.

Houellebecq, a fierce eurosceptic, became a pinup of the far right after his last book, Submission, which envisioned a France subject to syariah law after electing a Muslim president in 2022.

The deeply depressed hero of his latest book Serotonin is an agricultural engineer who returns to his roots in a provincial France devastated by globalisation and European agricultural policies.

He finds a resentful rural populace who are “virtually dead” yet ripe for rebellion and who rise up to block motorways, much as the “yellow vest” movement has done for real since late November.

Houellebecq’s seventh novel, written long before protesters in high-visibility vests began barricading roads to protest against President Emmanuel Macron’s policies, has been hailed by critics as eerily premonitory.

Anticipating runaway demand Flammarion publishing house has issued a first print run of 320,000 copies for the French language edition – 64 times that of the average novel.

“It’s all I’ve been selling since this morning,” a sales assistant at Delamain bookshop in central Paris said.

At another bookshop in the capital, Chantal, a 67-year-old Houellebecq fan, said she bought a copy as soon as the store opened.