Public Enemies: Dueling Writers Take On Each Other and the World

Bernard-Henri Lévy and Michel Houellebecq

Random House

320 pages, $17.00

Two brilliant, controversial authors confront each other in a blistering exchange of letters. Lévy is the author of the classic Barbarism with a Human Face, and has been dismissed by the media as a wealthy, self-promoting, arrogant do-gooder. Michel Houellebecq is the bestselling author of The Elementary Particles and has been widely derided as a sex-obsessed racist and misogynist. What began as a secret correspondence between bitter enemies evolved into a remarkable joint personal meditation by France’s premier literary and political live wires.