Book Club: Politics and Literature: Novels for the New Century - „Unterwerfung“

18.12.2023 - 18.12.2023

Before opening the discussion, we briefly introduced the author and his position in the French literary field. Above all, we emphasised the immediate context of the novel’s publication, released on the same day as the attack on the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo on 7 January 2015, which greatly influenced Submission’s reception in the media and political fields. Discussion of the book did not spark any controversy at all, despite its open Islamophobia. The misogyny of the main character and his constitutive passivity (two traits that characterise all of Houellebecq’s protagonists) have been much commented upon, as well as the imaginary of decline that runs through the novel. Submission was read as a farce rather than as a problematic provocation. We also wondered about the reasons for the success of this novel, which has become a bestseller.