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French novelist caused media frenzy when he vanished while promoting novel in 2011 – and now there's a film all about it
He is French literature's perpetual enfant terrible, with a reputation for bolshy rebelliousness and causing offence. So when Michel Houellebecq, hailed as France's greatest living novelist, failed to turn up for part of a promotional book tour in the Netherlands and Belgium in 2011, it might have been brushed aside as a mere quirk or oversight.
But instead, a media frenzy ensued with social networks pondering the mysterious "disappearance" or "kidnapping" of the literary nihilist, with some demanding that the French press investigate whether he had been taken hostage by al-Qaida.
After days of speculation, the notoriously hard to contact author, who is no fan of mobile phones or email, eventually surfaced to continue promoting his latest novel, The Map and the Territory. But the reasons for his temporary disappearance were never explained.
Now, in twist worthy of one of his books, a French production company has announced it has just finished shooting a feature film, L' Enlèvement de Michel Houellebecq, or The Kidnapping of Michel Houellbecq, with the author playing the starring role.
The director, Guillaume Nicloux, who has previously cast Houllebecq in a cameo role in another film, vowed to "retrace the week he disappeared" – describing it as "truth, lies, suppositions" and promising that "truth goes well beyond fiction".
The film company, Les Films du Worso, has remained tight-lipped on the script and storyline and whether the author had a hand in it. If so, his disappearance could be put down to anything from running off with a cloning cult to sitting at home alone eating ready meals in a grim French suburb.
Houellebecq's cinematic endeavours in the past have met with a harsh response. His directorial debut, the adaptation of his novel The Possibility of an Island, was skewered by critics as "catastrophic" and "ridiculous".
