Submission by Michel Houllebecq

Some literary critics panned Submission when it was published as being anti-immigration. But that is a misread of this dark political satire. Ironically, the book’s actual targets are those in government or the intellectual classes who would find some way to condemn this book for being anti-immigration.

I found the book to be elegantly written and thought provoking on several levels. Houellebecq explores the themes of indifference and lack of attachment more than anything else here. This was the first book by Houellebecq that I’ve read and I look forward to reading more of his work. — MJD

Summary:

A controversial, intelligent, and mordantly funny new novel from France's most famous living literary figure.

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 famous nineteenth-century Decadent author. But François's own decadence is considerably smaller in scale. He sleeps with his students, eats microwave dinners, rereads Huysmans, queues up YouPorn.

Excerpt:

I spent fifteen minutes strolling under the arcades with their metal beams, slightly surprised by my own nostalgia and aware, at the same time, that the place was really extremely ugly. Those hideous buildings had been constructed during the post period of modernism, but nostalgia has nothing to do with aesthetics, it’s not even connected to happy memories. We feel nostalgia for a local simply because we’ve lived there; whether we lived well or badly scarcely matters. The past is always beautiful. So, for that matter, is the future. Only the present hurts, and we carry it around like an abscess of suffering, our companion between two infinities of happiness and peace. p. 217

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