Michel Houellebecq was seated cross-legged in a chair in his publishers’ office here, chain-smoking and flicking away criticism that his latest novel, “Submission,” is Islamophobic, or at least critical of Islam. “I really couldn’t care less, to be honest,” said Mr. Houellebecq, France’s best-known world-weary bad-boy novelist, letting out a little laugh that interrupted his usual deadpan delivery.
Islam itself doesn’t interest him, he continued during a recent interview before the novel’s release in the United States next Tuesday by Farrar, Straus & Giroux. “What interests me is the fear that it creates, not the contents,” he said.
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