Serotonin

**LONGLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE 2020**
**A powerful criticism of modern life by one of the most provocative and prophetic writers of our age**
Florent-Claude Labrouste is dying of sadness. Despised by his girlfriend and on the brink of career failure, his last hope for relief comes in the form of a newly available antidepressant that alters the brain's release of serotonin.
When he returns to the Normandy countryside in search of serenity, he instead finds a rural community left behind by globalisation and red-tape agricultural policies, with local farmers longing for an impossible return towhat they remember as a golden age.
**'Despite its provocations, this is a novel of romantic and sorrowful ideas: Houellebecq as troubadour, singing lost loves' Rachel Kushner**
**Michel Houellebecq has good claim to be the most interesting novelist of our times* ***. . . E** * *xhilarating in its nihilism, often very funny and always enjoyable'* Evening Standard***