The Map and the Territory

The map — Michelin, blown up and manipulated by artist Jed Martin — is more beautiful, complex and profound than the territory itself, photographed from the sky. Martin says near the end of this Michel Houellebecq novel that he wants "to give an account of the world" with his paintings and photographs and, finally, videos. As in previous novels, Houellebecq delivers detours, shocks and gloom, but there is less explicit sex and random violence than before. It is a more autumnal, which is not to say mellow, Houellebecq.