Michel Houellebecq in the mother of all book battles

“What are these novels where nothing ever happens?” she says.

“This individual, who alas! came out of my tummy, is a liar, an impostor, a parasite and especially, especially, a little upstart ready to do anything for fortune and fame,” Mrs Ceccaldi, 83, writes in L'Innocente, an autobiography. The onslaught on the petit con (little git) is the revenge of a woman who has been scorned and disparaged by her son in public comments and writings.

In Atomised, the 1998 novel that propelled Houellebecq to stardom, for example, one of the most detestable characters is an ageing, dissolute hippy who abandoned her children in favour of sex in a strange community on the French Riviera.

The character is called Ceccaldi and bears a striking resemblance to Houellebecq's mother - who left him to be brought up by his grandparents while she drove around Africa with her husband in a 2CV and then went to work as a doctor. In subsequent interviews, the author described her as a slut and said that she was dead.

Mrs Ceccaldi is determined to prove that she is neither.

In an interview with Lire, the French literary magazine, to be published today, she said: “This is a libel because everything he says about me is false.”

Mrs Ceccaldi, a Communist Party activist in her youth who now lives in a beach hut on La Réunion island, goes on: “My son, he can f*** off wherever he wants, with whom he wants, because I don't give a stuff about him. But if he has the misfortune to stick my name in one of his things one more time, he's going to get hit in the gob with a walking stick and that'll knock all his teeth out, that's for sure.”

In a passage unlikely to add to Houellebecq's glory, she says that he wrote to her in 1992, before he became famous, asking for money. “Your justifications will only interest me if they are accompanied by a cheque,” said his letter.

Even the date of Houellebecq's birth - given as February 26, 1958, on his website, but actually two years earlier, according to his mother - is the source of friction.

He has blamed her for misleading him. But she says that he deliberately knocked two years off his age out of vanity.

“A little git and coquettish as well,” Mrs Ceccaldi is merciless about her son's literary talents and scornful of his ambition to write a science fiction novel. “He doesn't know anything about science or about fiction,” she told Lire.

The widely hailed Atomised lacks a “storyline” and is little more than a superficial look at fashionable themes, such as sexual problems. “It is a small and very ephemeral current of non-thought.” Beyond the bitter family squabble, Mrs Ceccaldi highlights two of the most disturbing aspects of her son's often nihilistic work.

One is his rejection of the 1960s hippy movement, which he blames for presaging a modern-day society where sex is a commodity and relationships are barren. She participated in the movement.

The other is his outspoken dislike of Islam, which has already landed in him court on charges of inciting racial hatred.

She says that the last time they met was in 1991 during the first Gulf War when “he went off on a mad diatribe about Arabs, saying we should burn them all”.

Despite the venom in their relationship, she held out faint hope of reconciliation with her son, who lives in the Republic of Ireland.

Maternal moments

— President Sarkozy’s mother, Andrée, a formidable former lawyer, sniffily described his ex-wife, Cécilia, as “cold” and warned him not to marry again

— Jackie Stallone is famously picky about her son Sylvester’s partners, saying: “The only woman good enough for my son is Princess Diana.” But she did him fewer favours by telling a women’s magazine that, because of his difficult birth, “when he speaks he speaks strangely, like this: ‘Helloo, hoow are yoouu?’. He stares at you and speaks with his eyes”

— Jarvis Cocker may be a sex symbol to his fans but to his mother “He’s still my little boy. He was such an awkward gangly sort though. No matter what he dressed in he looked like John Cleese . . . Of course he’s talented. But sexy? He’s not built like Rock Hudson or Steve McQueen”

— While Newt Gingrich was beginning his stint as Speaker of the US House of Representatives, his mother, Kathleen, confided on TV that “Newty” thought Hillary Clinton “a bitch”, and that her efforts to monopolise meetings annoyed him

— Norman Lamont’s mother leaked the news of his resignation as Chancellor of the Exchequer to her local Grimsby newspaper because she thought his school friends would be interested

— Jonathan Aitken’s mother rushed to his side when he found himself in trouble in 1993. “All over a silly hotel bill,” she complained

Source: Times archives