As Sydney Brownstone told you earlier today, the cartoon on the cover of this week's issue of Charlie Hebdo was mocking French author Michel Houellebecq for his new novel Soumission (in English, Submission,) a book that imagines a France in the near-future with a Muslim president. Carolyn Kellogg at the LA Times tracked down Houellebecq's American publisher, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, to see if it was being published in the United States. Jeff Seroy, senior vice president at FSG, confirmed that they will be publishing the book, but he says it does not yet have a publication date. As it was published just today in France, I'd imagine that the process of translating Submission into English has either just begun or it will begin shortly. This means it will be a while before it sees publication here.

I've read just about every work of Houellebecq's that has been translated into English, and though he denies charges that he's Islamophobic, I'd certainly use that word to describe him. Houellebecq is a provocateur—his books are misogynistic, racist, and often, at times, downright anti-human. (Houellebecq wrote a book about racist horror novelist H.P. Lovecraft subtitled Against the World, Against Life. It was mostly a work of admiration.) His novel Platform was perhaps the book that launched him onto the world stage after Houellebecq defended the book's pro-sex-tourism, anti-Islamic protagonist in interviews. His novel The Possibility of an Island is pure science fiction—it's narrated by a man in the present and his clones in the far future—and its dispassionate prose and clever incorporation of genre reads almost like a Haruki Murakami novel, if Murakami were a loathsome sociopath.

As near as I can tell from the translations of his novels, Houellebecq is a gifted writer who relentlessly challenges the tastes and opinions of his readers. Sensitive readers often can't finish his books; they find his voice to be too repulsive. (Back in 2011, I assigned books to a few local musicians, who then produced songs in response to the books. I gave Ryan Barrett of the Pica Beats a copy of The Possibility of an Island. He then wrote a song titled "They Don't Know" which directly argued with Houellebecq and Iggy Pop, who's a huge Houellebecq fan.) And Houellebecq, for his part, seems to revel in his role as a mirror of the worst parts of contemporary French culture. He has cast himself as a one-man argument against globalization, against the idea of multiculturalism, against the belief that every human being is born with dignity. Houellebecq is basically a gleeful spokesman for the fearful pessimist who will see today's events as another reason to close cultural channels, to shut out everyone who does not look, act, and behave exactly as they do. And now his book will probably become a global bestseller.