The central characters, Bruno and Michel, were born to a bohemian mother (but they had different fathers, of course) at the height of the sixties. Following her inevitable divorce, they endured separate childhoods and developed distinct identities. Bruno -- a failure to his own family and literary calling -- is pursued by sexual obsession and madness. Michel -- a wholly asexual molecular biologist -- expresses his disgust with society by engineering one that frees mankind at last from its uncontrollable, destructive urges.

An international phenomenon, The Elementary Particles is a furiously important novel.

"Les Particules Elementaires is a novel on the grand scale. It is almost Balzacian in its attention to detail, and dauntingly ambitious in its determination to tackle 'big themes': the descent of the West into an orgy of consumerism, the decline of Christianity, the potential of human cloning and the destructive nature of the liberal values and sexual permissiveness of the 1960's, which have, in the author's view, atomized society... Unsettling, rich in ideas, Les Particules Elementaire is a novel which sets out to provoke and upset, and yet does not try to outsmart its readers. Written in a straightforward style, it has a confident, reassuring narrative sweep... Demands to be read."...