Submission
By Michel Houellebecq & Lorin Stein
- Release Date: 2015-10-20
- Genre: Literary Fiction
Description
A controversial, intelligent, and mordantly funny new novel from France's most famous literary figure
Paris, 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.
Reviews
Dark, Brilliant, Provocative
5By NutmegGardener"Submission" is worth a read for anyone either convinced that the path we are following in the West is a triumphant march toward universal rights or the path of cultural and ethnic suicide. At turns bleak, darkly amusing and obviously provocative, it challenges readers by asking them to consider their bland, mass media-spoon fed reflexive beliefs through the story of existential hero who takes a rather surprising turn for someone who starts off sounding like a descendant of an Albert Camus character. Regardless of where you stand on the political spectrum, a must-read.
