Brilliant, caustic, comic, and severe, br The Elementary Particlesbr is an unflinching look at a modern world plagued by consumerism, materialism, and unchecked scientific experimentation.An international bestseller and controversial literary phenomenon that drew immediate comparison to the novels of Beckett, Huxley, and Camus, this is the story of two half-brothers abandoned by a mother who gave herself fully to the drugged-out free-love world of the sixties.Bruno, overweight and a failure at everything, is himself a raucously promiscuous hedonist, while Michel, his younger brother, is an emotionally dead molecular biologist wholly immersed in the solitude of his work. Each is ultimately offered a final chance at genuine love, and what unfolds is an endlessly unpredictable and provocative tale that speaks to the impossible redemption of the human condition.