?So when I borrowed ?Aphorisms on the Wisdom of Life? from the municipal library of the seventh arrondissement in Paris (more specifically, its annex in the Latour-Maubourg district), I may have been aged twenty-six, but equally possibly twenty-five, or twenty-seven. In any case, this is very late in life for such a major discovery. At the time, I already knew Baudelaire, Dostoevsky, Lautreamont, Verlaine, almost all the Romantics; a lot of science fiction, too. I had read the Bible, Pascal?s Pensees, Clifford D. Simak?s City, Thomas Mann?s The Magic Mountain. I wrote poems; I already had the impression I was rereading, rather than really reading; I thought I had at least completed one period in my discovery of literature.?
?And then, in a few minutes, everything dramatically changed.?
Preface by Agathe Novak-Lechevalier
Leave childhood behind, my friend, and wake up!
Chapter One: The world is my representation
Chapter Two: Look at things attentively
Chapter Three: In this way the will to live objectifies itself
Chapter Four: The theatre of the world
Chapter Five: The conduct of life: what we are
Chapter Six: The conduct of life: what we have
Notes
Michel Houellebecq is a French writer, poet and essayist. His many bestselling books include Platform, The Possibility of an Island, Submission and Serotonin. He won the prestigious Prix Goncourt in 2010 and, in 2019, he was awarded the Légion d'honneur, France's highest order of merit.