It is 2027. France is in a state of economic decline and moral decay. Unemployment, rural poverty and income inequality have reached unprecedented levels.

As the country plunges into a closely-fought presidential campaign, the French state falls victim to a series of mysterious and unsettling cyberattacks. The sophisticated nature of the attacks leaves the best computer scientists of the DGSI - the French counter-terrorism and counter-intelligence agency - scrambling for answers. A video posted on the internet depicts the guillotining of Finance Minister Bruno Juge. The atmosphere surrounding the elections, already tense, heightens further...

As an adviser to and confidant of Minister Juge, Paul Raison is close to the heart of government. His wife Prudence is a Treasury official, while his father Édouard, now retired, has spent his career working for the DGSI. And the personal life of Raison fils is as troubled and as atomised as that of the nation - his marriage has become strained, while his ties with his siblings are distant.

But when Édouard has a stroke, his children - Cécile, a fervent Catholic; Aurélien, a sensitive artist; and Paul, the government bureaucrat - have an opportunity to repair their relationships, as they determine to free their father, who is in a coma, from the medical centre where he is wasting away. And then Paul himself is struck down by illness...

Enfant terrible and provocateur, Michel Houellebecq's latest novel reveals both a new level of ambition and new sides to his writing, as he addresses faith and family, love and mortality, and adds compassion and tenderness to the emotions of rage, disgust and irony that have powered his earlier novels - and he himself - to international fame.