Michel Houellebecq - Lanzarote

"We can very well live without expecting anything from life; in fact, that's what happens most often. Generally speaking, people stay home, content that their phone never rings; and when the phone does ring, they leave the answering machine on. Not having news is good news. Generally speaking, that's how people are. And so am I."

Anticipating a miserable end to the year, our narrator – a disillusioned alter-ego of Michel Houellebecq – decides to start the new year with a vacation on the island of Lanzarote, an arid and inhospitable place that will welcome him, and his irony and acerbity, with open arms.

In the company of a taciturn and depressed Luxembourgish police inspector and with the help of two jovial German women who are into nudism and shameless caresses on the beach, our cynical fugitive gives free rein to his hedonism and analyzes the tourist specimen in action in a landscape as wild as his clinical observations.