"A work of real literary distinction...[Houellebecq] has been the novelist who has most fearlessly and presciently tackled the rise of Islamic extremism in recent years...He is a writer with a gift for telling the truth, unlike any other in our time - I've been consistently saying he is the writer who matters most to me for many years now. I've read Submission twice in the last week with ever growing admiration and enjoyment. There's been no English-language novel this good lately. With Submission Houellebecq has inserted himself right into the centre of the intellectual debate that was already raging in France about Islam and identity politics...There is nobody else writing now more worth reading." -- David Sexton * Evening Standard * "One cannot be said to be keeping abreast of contemporary literature without reading his work." -- Karl Ove Knausgaard * New York Times * "One cannot be said to be keeping abreast of contemporary literature without reading his work." -- Karl Ove Knausgaard * New York Times * "The narration is enjoyably sardonic, a pungent mixture of deadpan jokes about sexual politics and close reading...Darkly clever and funny." * Guardian * "A fine, deeply literary work...It is genuinely more admiring than critical of Islam...It's electrifying; no recent English-language novel compares." * Spectator *