Submission
Books | Fiction / Literary
3.5
(59)
Michel Houellebecq
A controversial, intelligent, and mordantly funny new novel from France's most famous literary figureParis, 2022. François is bored. He's a middle-aged lecturer at the Sorbonne and an expert on J. K. Huysmans, the famous nineteenth-century "decadent" author. But François's own decadence is considerably smaller in scale. He sleeps with his students, eats microwave dinners, reads the classics, queues up YouPorn. Meanwhile, it's election season. And although Francois feels "about as politicized as a hand towel," things are getting pretty interesting. In an alliance with the socialists, France's new Islamic party sweeps to power. Islamic law comes into force. Women are veiled, polygamy is encouraged, and Francois is offered an irresistible academic advancement--on condition that he convert to Islam. Adam Gopnik in The New Yorker has said of this novel that "Houellebecq is not merely a satirist but--more unusually--a sincere satirist, genuinely saddened by the absurdities of history and the madnesses of mankind." Michel Houellebecq's Submission may be satirical and melancholic, but it is also hilarious; a comic masterpiece by one of France's great novelists.
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More Details:
Author
Michel Houellebecq
Pages
256
Publisher
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published Date
2015-10-20
ISBN
0374714487 9780374714482
Community ReviewsSee all
"Reading this now, love how he talks abt reading... "Even in our deepest, most lasting friendships, we never speak do openly as when we face a blank page and address and unknown reader." "
Lili Cheng
"Brutal, philosophical, terrifying, and bigoted? Houellebecq's "Submission" describes the Muslim Brotherhood's demographic/religious takeover of France.<br/><br/>Published on the same day as the Charlie Hebdo shooting, Submission is a violent condemnation of the moral relativism/bankruptcy of leftist multicultural Europe and its impotence in the face of massive Muslim immigration. Told through the eyes of François, a disillusioned (and sexually ravenous) Sorbonne academic, the novel follows the seemingly unstoppable rise of the Muslim Brotherhood as it seeks to impose its religious views on the morally ambivalent French nation.<br/><br/>Houellebecq's writing is so direct and bitingly cynical that it hurts. Throughout the novel, he compares Islam to Christianity, noting the parallels between man's "naturally dominant" relationship to woman.<br/><br/>Although I was disgusted by his objectification of women and his blatant racism towards the Muslim immigrants, Houellebecq is right on the money when he talks about the idiocy and spinelessness of modern academia. How can those who believe in nothing hope to defend their ideas and culture from strong anti-Western religious ideology?<br/><br/>Full review and highlights at: <a href="http://books.max-nova.com/submission/">http://books.max-nova.com/submission/</a>"
Max Nova
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