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Sweeping, clever, heartbreaking and memorable. The perfect summer read Henrietta Richman Grazia 20170522

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. 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.

Set over three hours during one night in Manilla, this novel intertwines three stories: the shady dealings of gangsters; the emotional tale of a Phillipino family and the family lives of a gang of street kids.