Submission
A Novel
Picador · Print & ebook · October 25, 2016
A controversial, intelligent, and mordantly funny new novel from France’s most famous living literary figure It’s 2022.
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- Who it’s for
- A mordant, unsettling novel where personal ennui meets political upheaval.
- Themes
- Political upheaval, Religious conversion, Academic ambition
- Genres
- 21st-Century French Fiction, Political Fiction, Satire
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Start with this bookAbout this book
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 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.
Continue reading
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.
Satire With Teeth
A mordant, unsettling novel where personal ennui meets political upheaval.
Come here for
- Dark comedy with a serious literary streak
- A sharp collision of private appetite and public change
Expect
- A bored lecturer’s perspective on a France transformed by election
- Provocation and irony, without tidy comfort
Where it sits
| Political Fiction | 80% |
|---|---|
| Satire | 80% |
| 21st-Century French Fiction | 52% |
Percentages are BookFrontier’s reading of the book.
Publisher categories
- Literary Fiction
- Satire
- 21st-Century French Fiction
- Authors
- Michel Houellebecq
- Publisher
- Picador
- Published
- October 25, 2016
- Format
- Print & ebook
- Theme
- Political upheaval · Religious conversion · Academic ambition
- Reading lane
- Literary Fiction