Although Belgian, Amelie Nothomb, 37, is a cult figure on the Parisian literary scene and her novels generate the sort of excitement in France that other countries reserve for sporting events. Sulphuric Acid, as the latest is called, will be no exception when it reaches the bookshops this week.

Nothomb is renowned for her good looks and extraordinary habits — she gets up at 4am and reportedly drinks vinegar for breakfast — but she has been denied the biggest literary prizes. Some critics see the book, which is certain to upset Holocaust survivors, as an attempt to shock the judges into submission.

One critic writing in the newspaper Le Parisien accused her of trivialising the Holocaust in the interests of satirising television reality shows. The idea of a contest in which participants were executed by popular vote smacked of a “nauseating marketing gimmick”, said the review.

In the race for a succès de scandale, however, Nothomb may have been outclassed by Michel Houellebecq, France’s literary provocateur in chief.

So great was the buzz surrounding his forthcoming novel about sex, aliens and eternal life that he was almost assured of winning the prestigious Prix Goncourt, said critics who had not even read the book.

Reality television shows from Celebrity Farm, in which the contestants are corralled together for weeks on a farm, to First Company, in which they share a boot camp in the South American jungle, are hugely popular in France. Nothomb takes the idea to a shocking extreme by imagining a programme called Concentration in which the participants are herded into cattle wagons and interned in a concentration camp “similar to the Nazi ones used in the deportations”.

The contestants are beaten and whipped while the cameras follow each sequence, including the executions of participants who are knocked off the show each week after an interactive vote by the audience.

Things become complicated when one of the female prison guards falls in love with a young female inmate, a plot twist that led another French critic to rename the book “Lesbos dans la SS Academy” — a reference to a popular French reality television programme called Star Academy.

Extreme relationships between women are a central theme of Nothomb’s prose which is often the subject of earnest literary seminars and has won plaudits from peers for its “elegance and fierceness”.

Last week her image was plastered all over the newsstands. France is in the midst of celebrating la rentrée littéraire — the publishing world’s return to work after the summer holidays — when the largest number of books is published.

Magazines and newspapers are filled with mostly glowing reviews of the 633 new novels that will fill the shops in the next few weeks.

Houellebecq has towered over this year’s literary crop which includes two unflattering biographies of the writer in addition to his new novel, The Possibility of an Island.

That the publishers refused to hand out advance copies of the Houellebecq novel except to a handful of friendly critics and that the odd pirated copy has been so savagely reviewed only adds to the frenzy of interest in an author preoccupied with oral sex, wife-swapping and the Raelians, an alien-worshipping sect.

Referring to the excitement surrounding Houellebecq, Le Parisien’s critic said the media had been “fed like battery hens” by Fayard, the publisher which paid £1m for his book. The critic added, however, that “the real shame was elsewhere” — a reference to Nothomb’s concentration camp book.

It will not be until people have read it that the real debating will begin. In a nation of bibliophiles, a new novel by Houellbecq or Nothomb can keep a Parisian bistro buzzing with conversation for hours. A whiff of scandal can enliven the chatter as much as the sales.

Whether or not Nothomb manages to oust Houellebecq as the enfant terrible of French letters, one book expected to sell well in the next few weeks will be the autobiography of Patrick Poivre d’Arvor, the country’s best-known television news presenter. However, this is only because he reveals in the book that he had an illegitimate child with Claire Chazal, the second best-known television news presenter.

All this literary industry seems paradoxical in a country that enjoys its leisure so much. One of last year’s bestsellers was Hello Laziness, a guide to doing nothing in the office while pretending to be hard at work.

Nothomb, who declared at 33 that she had already written 37 novels, most of them too personal to be published, can hardly be accused of that.

Explore World News

• Iraq News

• US & Americas News

• Europe News

• Middle East News

• Asia News

• Africa News

Times Recommends

• Burma's victims and the fight for life
• Mexico in the grip of drugs carnage
• Amputee sprinter allowed to compete in Beijing