In 1998, France won the World Football Cup. And the European Union prohibited human cloning, which certainly did not remain in people's memories to the same degree. A need for social cohesion and vertigo when faced with the progress of scientific research structuring the landscape in which Michel Houellebecq's second novel, The Elementary Particles, appeared. Considered by many a monument of contemporary literature, this book has already been adapted for the stage abroad- notably by the Dutch Johan Simons - but never in France.