The anxiety over a Muslim “takeover” of a Western country is only a red herring in Michel Houellebecq’s latest novel. The real topic by this controversial, impolite French author is the emotionally barren, socially disconnected, intellectually dishonest, greed-driven culture of the contemporary world—in the particular context of a near-future France.
Devastatingly witty and hilariously churlish, the novel’s unpleasant yet never uninteresting narrator utters awkward truths even as he allows himself to be carried along on tides of popular sentiment. Trenchant observation: “It may well be impossible for people who have lived and prospered under a given system to imagine the point of view of those who feel it offers them nothing.”
