Steve Sailer writes:
Submission has now finally been published in America, and it turns out to be worth the nine-month wait. (…)
Is Submission
a dystopian novel or a utopian one, as Houellebecq sometimes maintains in interviews? Keep in mind that France has nothing resembling a First Amendment, so Houellebecq’s ambiguity may be not just a masterly literary strategy, but also a legal one to keep him out of jail. It’s not wholly irrelevant that the current leader in the polls for the first round of the 2017 French presidential election, Marine Le Pen of the National Front, is right now on trial and could be sentenced to a year in prison for criticizing the Islamification of France. Houellebecq himself was put on trial in 2002 for calling Islam “the stupidest religion.” He was acquitted, but exiled himself to Ireland for several years. (…)
Submission presents Islam as a more streamlined religion for modern misogynists than French Catholicism, which is centered upon the Virgin Mary. Indeed, a look at the list of converts suggests that Islam mostly appeals to men of the right, such as black jocks, eccentric military men, and mystics.
