Why has Soumission been drawn in? Here are the answers, along with excerpt from reviews of the new novel, whose English translation will be published in September. Houellebecq, of course, is not only a provocative writer but also the winner of the Prix de Goncourt, France’s highest literary prize, for this earlier novel The Map and the Territory.
LesInRocks
The title of his new novel, Submission (Flammarion) announces immediately colour: "submission" is the translation of the word "Islam", ie submission to Allah and, by extension, the submission of "infidels" by the conversion.
Submission is a social fiction novel that immerses us in France 2022: Hollande arrives at the end of his second term, and the first round of the election will face the National Front and the Muslim Brotherhood (the party Muslims in France, pure invention of the author). The latter won the presidency by joining the PS and the UMP, and naming Bayrou prime minister, and the company will be located entirely upset.
The Guardian
Some in France have already complained that the novel fans right-wing fears of the Muslim population, but that is to miss Houellebecq’s deeply mischievous point. Islamists and anti-immigration demagogues, the novel gleefully points out, really ought to be on the same side, because they share a suspicion of pluralist liberalism and a desire to return to “traditional” or pre-feminist values, where a woman submits to her husband – just as “Islam” means that a Muslim submits to God.
Le Parisien
Houellebecq himself is satirised on the front cover of the new issue of Charlie Hebdo, with a caricature of the author, in a wizard’s hat, topped by the line: “The predictions of the mage Houellebecq: ‘In 2015, I lose my teeth’, and ‘In 2022, I do Ramadan.’ ”
The Untranslated
The European civilisation subjugated and humiliated by the onslaught of Islamist hordes, the forced conversions, the public executions in the squares, the burning of “profane” books, all this to the accompaniment of a plangent summons of a muezzin up in the minaret of a gigantic mosque erected on the site of the torn-down Notre Dame de Paris…If this is how you imagine the new novel by Michel Houellebecq, my advice is: spare the money and buy some science fiction dystopia dealing with the subject instead. I guess there should be something on the market these days. At the end of the day, Submission is not so much about the dreaded islamisation of Europe, as it is about the problem of getting laid for the man on the wrong side of 40. Just like the rest of Houellebecq’s works, n’est-ce pas?
And the female clothes had changed; I felt it immediately, although failing to analyse this transformation. The number of Islamic veils had hardly increased; it wasn’t that, and it took me almost an hour of wandering to grasp all at once what had changed: all the women were wearing trousers. The detection of women’s thighs, the mental projection reconstructing the pussy at their crossing, the process whose power of excitement is directly proportional to the length of the naked legs: all this was in me so much involuntarily, automatic, genetic as it were, that I had not become aware of the fact immediately, but the evidence was there, dresses and skirts had disappeared. A new garment had also become widespread: a kind of long cotton blouse reaching the mid-thigh, which killed all the objective interest in skintight trousers certain women could have eventually worn. As for shorts, they were obviously out of the question. The contemplation of the female ass, a small dreamy consolation, had also become impossible.
~ From Submission
Houellebecq has invented a new concept: the literature of the troll. But how do we obey the adage: "Don't feed the troll"?