A gentle, humane and eloquent guide

Brilliant

For readers of all religions and readers of none

If you believe books can change lives, earmark this one

You don't have to be a Buddhist to read it: its mastery lies in the lucid way it presents esoteric ideas

One of the most helpful books I have ever read

Marvellous - like all the great teachings, it is both simple and complex, and full of love and compassion

Sogyal Rinpoche speaks directly and clearly to the Western mind and heart with humour, joy and great warmth.

I have encountered no book on the interplay of life and death that is more comprehensive, practical and wise.

Valuable and profound

Houellebecq has an unerring, Balzacian flair for detail, and his novels provide an acute, disenchanted anatomy of French middle-class life … Houellebecq writes about Islam with curiosity, fascination, even a hint of envy.

There are echoes of Albert Camus’s outsider, Meursault, in François’ lack of emotion and relentless cynicism…Submission, expertly translated by Lorin Stein, can be read on a number of levels. As much as it is about Islamic and political tensions in France, Houellebecq also explores the inner world of his chauvinistic antihero who struggles to find meaning in his life and seeks solace in sex.

Michel Houllebecq's Submission is many things: comic, profound, and at times unexpectedly moving. It is much more about human nature than Islam, and to think otherwise is to misunderstand it. Of the several suicide notes for the west Houellebecq has written, this is his best.

Extraordinary… if there is anyone in literature today, not just in French but worldwide, who is thinking about the sort of enormous shifts we all feel are happening, it’s him.

Submission is polemical and comic by turns.

A diligent, even-tempered novel of ideas.

A brilliant translation by Lorin Stein…It is a captivating read (perhaps thanks to the translator, who is plainly equally at home in English and French, and who is so good that you hardly ever remember that you are reading something originally written in a language utterly different from English)…A highly plausible political thriller.

Submission is an intelligent, misanthropic satire that addresses questions crucial to multicultural societies.

The publication of Houellebecq's controversial novel...was a political event in itself. The book is brilliant, funny and deliberately offensive...and offers a sharp insight into the troubles of modern France

The year’s most prophetic and provocative novel.

The most talked about, and most topical, novel.

If you only read one book this summer, read this one … Please read this book. It says more about where we stand and what might happen than anything else I have read in the past few years.

A fascinating book, and, as always with Houellebecq, horribly readable.

Brilliant novel.

Uncomfortable and satirical – it shows one of France’s great controversialists at his best.

A timely, caustic, often funny novel… It has the cleverest, most satisfying ending I’ve read all year.

Submission is the latest Houellebecq novel and perhaps his most bitingly funny in parts, but it’s also a reminder of how European nations may succumb to foreign domination and “submit”.

What a visionary!... You must read it this summer, you’ll love it. It’s so incredible they published that a year before everything happened… He has a vision and it’s incredible… Incredible!

The literary chronicler of Western decadence