The Map and the Territory

The Map and the Territory, published in French as La carte et le territoire, is a novel by French author Michel Houellebecq, his fifth, published on 4 September 2010 by Flammarion five years after The Possibility of an Island. The narrative follows a successful artist and involves a fictional murder of Houellebecq himself, and its title alludes to the map-territory relation. The novel was among the most eagerly awaited and discussed French books of its season, with a first printing of 120,000 copies, and it received the Prix Goncourt, France's most prestigious literary prize, on 8 November 2010 on the first ballot. An English translation by Gavin Bowd appeared in January 2012. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/