Michel Houellebecq is a French novelist, poet, and literary critic. His novels include the international bestsellers Submission, The Elementary Particles, and The Map and the Territory, which won the 2010 Prix Goncourt. He lives in France.
Shaun Whiteside is a Northern Irish translator of French, Dutch, German, and Italian literature. He has translated many novels, including Manituana and Altai, by Wu Ming; The Weekend, by Bernhard Schlink; and Magdalene the Sinner, by Lilian Faschinger, which won the Schlegel-Tieck Prize for German translation in 1997.