François

François is the main character and narrator of Submission. He is a 44-year-old literary academic who teaches at the Sorbonne Paris III. François is highly respected for his work on the author Joris-Karl Huysmans, and his dissertation, “Joris-Karl Huysmans: Out of the Tunnel” is considered a masterpiece of literary criticism. François’s internal monologue stands in stark contrast to people’s perception of him. He speaks in bland, everyday prose and is more concerned with television and microwave dinners than his career. François, whose name means simply “Frenchman,” is representative of Michel Houellebecq's vision of the average French citizen; bored, selfish, without empathy or a moral code. As an academic, he thinks only about his chosen subject and little else. He is an individualist to the point that he does not care about the radical political changes taking place in Houellebecq's fictional France...