Atomised, also known as The Elementary Particles , is a novel by the French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 author Michel Houellebecq

Michel Houellebecq

Michel Houellebecq , born Michel Thomas, 26 February 1958—or 1956 —on the French island of Réunion, is a controversial and award-winning French author, filmmaker and poet. To admirers he is a writer in the tradition of literary provocation that reaches back to the Marquis de Sade and Baudelaire;...

, published in France in 1998. It tells the story of two half-brothers, Michel and Bruno, and their mental struggles against their situations in modern society. It was translated to English by Frank Wynne

Frank Wynne

Frank Wynne is an Irish literary translator and writer.Born in Co. Sligo, Ireland, he worked as a comics editor at Fleetway and later at Deadline magazine . He worked for a time at AOL before becoming a literary translator...

 as Atomised in the UK and as The Elementary Particles in the US. It won the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award

International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award

The International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award is an international literary award for a work of fiction, jointly sponsored by the city of Dublin, Ireland and the company IMPAC. At €100,000 it is one of the richest literary prizes in the world...

 for writer and translator.

Plot summary

Despite the essentially elaborate scope of the plot revealed in the novel's conclusion (i.e. the eventual emergence of cloning

Cloning

Cloning in biology is the process of producing similar populations of genetically identical individuals that occurs in nature when organisms such as bacteria, insects or plants reproduce asexually. Cloning in biotechnology refers to processes used to create copies of DNA fragments , cells , or...

 as a replacement for the sexual reproduction

Sexual reproduction

Sexual reproduction is the creation of a new organism by combining the genetic material of two organisms. There are two main processes during sexual reproduction; they are: meiosis, involving the halving of the number of chromosomes; and fertilization, involving the fusion of two gametes and the...

 of the human race), the narrative focuses almost exclusively on the bleak and unrewarding day-to-day lives of the protagonists; two half-brothers who barely know each other.
They seem devoid of love, and in their loveless or soon to be loveless journeys, Bruno becomes a saddened loner

Loner

A loner is a person who avoids or does not actively seek human interaction or prefers to be alone. There are many reasons for solitude, intentional or otherwise, and "loner" implies no specific cause. Intentional reasons include spiritual and religious considerations or personal philosophies...

, wrecked by his upbringing and failure to mature, while Michel’s pioneering work in cloning removes love from the process of reproduction. Humans are proven, in the end, to be just particles and just as bodies decay (a theme in the book) they can also be created from particles.

Setting and narrative

The story unfolds as a sort of framed narrative, so despite the events described therein having taken place mostly in 1999, the story is essentially set some 50 or so years in the future. A similar device was used by Kurt Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. was a 20th century American writer. His works such as Cat's Cradle , Slaughterhouse-Five and Breakfast of Champions blend satire, gallows humor and science fiction. He was known for his humanist beliefs and was honorary president of the American Humanist Association.-Early...

 in the novel Galápagos, however unlike Vonnegut, Houellebecq only reveals the frame to the reader in the epilogue

Epilogue

An epilogue, epilog or afterword is a piece of writing at the end of a work of literature or drama, usually used to bring closure to the work...

. Large sections of the story are presented in the form of suppertime storytelling dialogues between Michel, his childhood sweetheart Annabelle, Bruno, and Bruno's post-divorce girlfriend Christiane.

Characters

The story focuses on the lives of Bruno Clément and Michel Djerzinski, two French half brothers born of a hippie

Hippie

The hippie subculture was originally a youth movement that arose in the United States during the mid-1960s and spread to other countries around the world. The etymology of the term 'hippie' is from hipster, and was initially used to describe beatniks who had moved into San Francisco's...

–type mother. Michel is raised by his paternal grandmother and becomes an introverted molecular biologist who is ultimately responsible for the discoveries which lead to the elimination of sexual reproduction.
Bruno's upbringing is much more tragic as described: shuffled and forgotten from one abusive boarding school to another, he eventually finds himself in a loveless marriage and teaching at a high school. Bruno grows into a lecherous and insatiable sex addict whose dalliances with prostitutes and sex chat on Minitel

Minitel

The Minitel is a Videotex online service accessible through the telephone lines, and is considered one of the world's most successful pre-World Wide Web online services. It was launched in France in 1982 by the PTT...

 do nothing to satisfy him, to the point where he finds himself on disability leave from his job and in a mental hospital after a failed attempt at seducing one of his students.

Reception and recognition

The novel's publication caused quite a stir in French literary circles, and it sold hundreds of thousands of copies and vaulted Houellebecq into the French intellectual and literary spotlight during the summer and autumn of 1998. The vivid, almost pornographic sexual descriptions were a frequent target of criticism, and Houellebecq himself attracted both scorn and praise for his erratic proclamations and behaviour on television interviews and the like. The author was eventually awarded the Prix Novembre

Prix Décembre

The Prix Décembre, originally known as the Prix Novembre, is one of France's premier literary awards. Its winners are generally far more radical choices than the more staid and conservative Prix Goncourt...

 in recognition of the novel. He became the last one to get this prize under this name. Michael Dennery, the founder of the Prix Novembre, disapproved awarding of the prize to Houllebecq and resigned, the prize got a new patron - Pierre Bergé - and a new name: Prix Decembre.

In April 2008, Houllebecq's estranged mother, Lucie Ceccaldi, returned to France to publish The Innocent One, a rebuttal to his alleged mis-characterization of her parenting as contained in the novel. In press interviews, she promised that "if he has the misfortune of sticking my name on anything again he'll get my walking stick in his face and that'll knock his teeth out."http://www.reuters.com/article/oddlyEnoughNews/idUSN0137893420080501?sp=truehttp://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/may/07/fiction.familyandrelationships

Film adaptation

A film version premiered at the 2006 Berlin Film Festival and won the Silver Bear award. The German film Elementarteilchen was directed by Oskar Roehler

Oskar Roehler

Oskar Roehler is a German film director, screen writer and journalist. He was born in Starnberg as the son of writer Gisela Elsner and the writer Klaus Roehler. Since the mid-1980s he has been working as a screenwriter, for, among others, Niklaus Schilling, Christoph Schlingensief and Mark...

, and had reportedly been sold to distributors in 23 countries within days of its premiere at the Berlin Film Festival. The cast includes Moritz Bleibtreu

Moritz Bleibtreu

Moritz Bleibtreu is a German actor.Bleibtreu was born in Munich, the son of actors Monica Bleibtreu and Hans Brenner, and the great-grand-nephew of the actress Hedwig Bleibtreu.Bleibtreu grew up in Hamburg...

 (Bruno), Christian Ulmen

Christian Ulmen

Christian Ulmen is a German entertainer and actor.-Career:Ulmen started his television career in 1996 as a video jockey on MTV Europe...

 (Michel), Franka Potente

Franka Potente

Franka Potente is a German film actress and singer. She first appeared in the comedy After Five in the Forest Primeval and gained critical recognition in the action thriller Lola rennt . Potente received Germany's highest film and television awards for her performances in Run Lola Run and...

 (Annabelle), and Martina Gedeck

Martina Gedeck

Martina Gedeck is a German actress. She came to broader, international attention due to her roles in films such as Mostly Martha, The Lives of Others, and The Baader Meinhof Complex...

 (Christiane).

External links

• IMDB page of the movie (Elementarteilchen)
• The prophets of pessimism, Josie Appleton, Spiked
  Spiked (magazine)
  Spiked is a British Internet magazine focusing on politics, culture and society from a humanist and libertarian viewpoint.- Editors and contributors :...
  
  , August 3, 2006
• "Just in time for Mothers Day!", Estelle Shirbon, Reuters
  Reuters
  Reuters is a news agency headquartered in New York City. Until 2008 the Reuters news agency formed part of a British independent company, Reuters Group plc, which was also a provider of financial market data...
  
  , May 1, 2008. Accessed May 2, 2008.