Book cover: Submission by Michel Houellebecq.
You'll go a long way to find a more complex character than French writer Michel Houellebecq. He has attracted (and courted) controversy throughout his literary career.
He has been labelled a nihilist (for his depiction of the void at the heart of contemporary Western society in Atomised), and a hate-speaking
anti-Islamist (on the strength of his description of Islam as "the dumbest of religions" in another novel, Platform). Yet in his latest novel, one of his characters - quite sympathetically portrayed - makes a persuasive argument that Islam is an alternative for the serious-minded to the vapid consumerism that underpins most aspects of Western culture.
The French original of Submission was published on the very day of the notorious Charlie Hebdo killings. Unsurprisingly, Houellebecq withdrew from the scheduled publicity tour on the grounds of ill-health. The novel - a subtle, intelligent, near-future dystopia - was likely to have attracted antipathy from Muslims and anti-Islamists alike.
Not a decade from now, according to the vision of Submission, France and wider Europe will be divided between the "nativist" anti-immigrant right (perversely using the language of the rights of indigenous people to claim a privileged position in society) and pro-Muslim political movements aligned with the left.
It is in this context that François, a rather second-rate academic, is experiencing a mid-life crisis even as France is going to the polls to choose between right wing and Muslim candidates for the presidency. His parents are lately dead, his Jewish girlfriend has fled to Israel in anticipation of the Islamists coming to power, and he has lost interest in his work.
