France's most critically acclaimed and popular novel of the year has been removed from the short list for the country's top literary award because it has been deemed too controversial - especially in the wake of the 11 September attacks on the US.
Michel Houellebecq's novel Plateforme had been hotly tipped by bookmakers and critics to carry off the Prix Goncourt (equivalent in prestige to the Booker Prize) when the first shortlist was published by the Académie Goncourt on 12 September.
But the book, which has sold a remarkable 200,000 copies since its publication in late August, did not make it to the second shortlist published last week. Now it seems likely that 80-year-old Alain Robbe-Grillet, leading proponent of the French nouvel roman in the 1960s, will win the award on 5 November with his book La Reprise .
Houellebecq's novel became the hit of la rentrée, the period when France's most enticing books are published, partly because its author is well versed in causing media scandals to generate publicity for his book.
The first scandal happened when Plateforme was attacked as being merely a thinly veiled apology for sex tourism in Thailand.
Before the book was even published in France, Philippe Gloaguen, the founder of the Guide Routard, the publishers of travel books similar to the Rough Guide series published in Britain, attacked Houellebecq for 'writing disgraceful muck against the dignity of women' as well as defending prostitution in the Third World.
One character in the novel celebrated the sexual delights of Pattaya in Thailand: 'Over there everybody gets what they want, there's something for everybody's tastes: homosexuals, heterosexuals, transvestites - It's Sodom and Gomorrah rolled into one - I've travelled a lot for pleasure and I wouldn't hesitate to tell you, Thai girls are the best lovers in the world'
But that was as nothing compared with the second scandal to hit Houellebecq's novel. Later in the book, the main character, Michel, loses his girlfriend when she is killed in an attack by Muslim extremists. Later he says that every time he learns that a Palestinian child or pregnant woman has been shot, he feels a 'shiver of enthusiasm that there is one Muslim less'.
Houellebecq, whose mother converted to Islam, subsequently gave an incendiary interview to the literary magazine Lire in which he said: 'It's natural that Michel wants to kill as many Muslims as possible. Yes, yes. There is such a thing as vengeance. Islam is a dangerous religion.'
Even before the heightened tensions provoked by the 11 September attacks, these remarks infuriated many Muslims in France. Several Muslim associations - including the mosques of Paris and Lyon - are suing Lire and Houellebecq for 'inciting racial hatred and religious violence'.
Houellebecq has issued a brief statement: 'I deny being a racist, I have never confounded Arabs and Muslims and it really annoys me when certain journalists do that while at the same time confusing what my characters say in the book with what the author has said.'
