The Artificial Temptation
Original title: La tentation artificielle
Synopsis
American Psycho 40 Years Later or the Human Comedy of Our Time
In his second novel, Clément Camar-Mercier continues his exploration of our disenchanted age through a virtuoso portrait of a coding genius who decides to go on a spiritual retreat in a monastery. From the offices of the billionaire French businessman Xavier Niel and the corridors of the interior ministry to the cloisters of Solesmes Abbey, the author maps out the occult contours of a society that has lost its way. But La tentation artificielle is also a dizzying depiction of the mind of a man obsessed with the devil who comes to believe that algorithms are the ultimate form of language, affording a new connection with the sacred in a world where God seems to have taken a leave of absence.
Marketing Information
- An eagerly awaited author: his first novel, Le Roman de Jeanne et Nathan, was nominated for the Renaudot Prize, the Flore Prize, the Castel Prize, the Méduse Prize, the First Novel Prize, the World Literary Prize and the Société des Gens de Lettres Prize.
- A tragicomic text that plays with genres and registers: picaresque novel, anticipation, coming-of-age novel, crime novel.
- A well-researched novel that teaches you everything you ever wanted to know about algorithms and artificial intelligence.
- A French – and contemporary – version of Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho , with coders replacing traders.
