Serotonin

When the 46-year-old protagonist of "Serotonin," the new novel by Goncourt Prize winner Michel Houellebecq, takes stock of his life, he decides to say goodbye to it – a decision that even the revolutionary new antidepressant Captorix cannot change, primarily because it costs him his libido. He dissolves everything: relationships, job, home. When did this present begin? In the memories of the women in his life and in his encounter with an old college friend, who is struggling to survive as a farmer in a globalized France, he realizes when and where he has betrayed himself and others. Michel Houellebecq has never written so seriously and emotionally about love. At the same time, "Serotonin" depicts the struggle and impending decline of a classic industry in our era of global markets and faceless EU bureaucracy. "A novel that is to be read more as a symptom of our time than as an analysis of our present." ORF Best List.