Submission (2015)

Michel Houellebecq's most controversial novel - you must not be afraid to sell. 

A France ruled by a moderate Islamic party. with politics in the background for a broader diagnosis: the moral and cultural emptying of the West.

The protagonist, François, an apathetic university professor, lives immersed in pornography, processed food and existential indifference (sounds familiar?). When the Islamic regime offers him status, money and young women in exchange for conversion, he accepts without looking back. 

And then, the brutality: there is no shock, no drama, only surrender (docile). It is impossible to avoid sarcasm at the fragility of our liberal convictions. Behind the civilized discourse, there is a void ready to be filled by any promise of order and meaning.

The discomfort is inevitable because the satire is too close to reality.

Michel Houellebecq, born in 1956 on the island of Réunion, built a career dissecting, with almost scientific coldness, the remains of European humanism. Accused of Islamophobia, misogyny and cynicism, he prefers to claim the role of a cruel observer of our decadence. His literature seeks neither comfort nor reconciliation. Houellebecq has become the writer that many hate to read but cannot ignore, because his prose throws the reader against a dirty mirror where the reflected image is our own capitulation.