Name: Soumission
ISBN: 9781250097347

Soumission

It’s 2022. François is bored. He’s a middle-aged lecturer at the New Sorbonne University and an expert on J. K. Huysmans, the famed nineteenth-century novelist associated with the Decadent movement. But François’s own decadence is of considerably smaller scale. He sleeps with his students, eats microwave dinners, and watches YouPorn. Meanwhile, it’s election season, and in an alliance with the Socialists, France’s new Islamic party sweeps to power―and Islamic law is instituted. Women are veiled, polygamy is encouraged, and François is offered an irresistible academic advancement―on the condition that he converts to Islam. A darkly comic masterpiece from one of France’s great writers, Submission by Michel Houellebecq has become an international sensation and one of the most discussed novels of our time.

What Hacker News says

golemotronApr 2017

Michel Houellebecq is a true prophet. From his novel Atomised to The Possibility of an Island (metaphor for social media) to Soumission, he's been years ahead re zeitgeist and social climate since the 90s.

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largesseNov 2015

Michel Houellebecq alludes to an interesting idea in his novel Soumission - in the hierarchy that the West is using for identity politics, race and religion are less touchable than women’s rights and gender equality. The West will not criticize muslim culture with its implicit patriarchy and unequal treatment because they are the underdogs. Everything I see indicates that this is true especially in the UK. The question is how far accepts and lack of criticism will go before rights that we consider sacrosanct in the West are eroded by demographics in Europe.

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