Michel Houellebecq is awarded the Interallié Prize

In 1994, with the publication of Whatever, Michel Houellebecq burst onto the French literature scene, but it was his second novel, Atomised (1998), which brought him renown as well as controversy

. Previously, this native of La Réunion, graduate in agronomy, had only published a collection of articles - Rester vivant (1991) - to poetry books that passed relatively unnoticed - La poursuite du bonheur (1992) and Le Sens du combat, laureate of the Flore prize in 1996 - and an original biography of Howard P. Lovecraft, a writer with the despair and existential solitude that Houellebecq had a particular rapport with (1991). At the same time as Atomised, laureate of the November prize, his quarrels with the review Perpendiculaire and his comments about Islam caused controversy.

Lambasted as much as admired, Houellebecq responded to all those who cried media-masquerade by publishing Platform (2001) and The Possibility of an Island (2005), two novels that seduced and the public as much as the critics - the latter received the Interallié prize in 2006, after having competed for the Goncourt - still without being able to silence his detractors. Today Houellebecq lives in Spain, where the intrigue of The Possibility of an Island took place.