The end of the industrial age in France and Europe at large as portrayed by a novelist. As we know, economists don't read much in the way of fiction, and literary critics read even fewer of the financial pages. This means that crucial aspects of the novel by the best-known modern French author, Michel Houellebecq, have been ignored by the critics, namely what the author himself describes as a nostalgic meditation on the emend of the industrial age in France and Europe. He believes that...