I've been wanting to read the French author Michael Houellebecque for some time now.

He is considered to be one of the best writers on global capitalism and its effects.

Novelist Jeffrey Eugenides expresses Houellebecque's metier best:

[...] He is acute on the subjects of business and the macro effects of global capitalism. His books are the strangest confections: part Gallic anomie, part sociological analysis, part Harold Robbins. He says a lot of depressing un-American things I get a big kick out of.