Rorate interviews Evelyn Oliver, author of an imaginative and robustly Catholic novel

Can fiction serve faith? The Egyptian Guide: From Jihad to Joy

Rorate Caeli: Yours is a book in between two rivers, the Nile and the Thames. The plot takes us alternatively to contemporary Egypt and England. The literary pattern is transit, from one bank to the opposite one, and more generally from one river to the other. Behind the eventful itinerary of your main character, Clara, could the watermark (no pun intended) be the Book of Exodus, when the Chosen People leaves the Nile and the Red Sea behind, making their (tortuous) way towards the River Jordan? 

Evelyn Oliver: I wish London were the Promised Land! But yes, the book is about journeying from sin to grace. I didn’t intend the two rivers as a literary pattern though. I was born near one and raised near another: it must have influenced me. In retrospect however, I admit that the Nile and the Thames offer a variation on the theme of crossing. Each river is an axis along which the story takes Clara successively to a busy capital city (Cairo and London), a haven (Osly in Sudan, by a ford, and Henley-on-Thames, near a lock) and a martyr’s shrine (Alexandria and Marlow). 

"Islam is a Religion, only another Religion can beat it." "The Lay Catholic Masses are stunning, but the Hierarchy is inactive."

Hungarian edition of
"Submission"

Michel Houellebecq's Submission (Soumission, Flammarion, 2015 - earlier review here), a novel based on a possible takeover of the France polity by an Islamic political party through democratic means, has been one of the great editorial successes of 2015.

In the most recent issue of the venerable Revue des Deux Mondes, dedicated to "prophetic writers" (that is, writers who express acutely the fears of their own times), Houellebecq, who would surely have become a Catholic convert in more confident times..., speaks on Islam and what is needed to stop it: namely, another religion.

Excerpts:

Revue des Deux Mondes – But, since its enemies have declared war to Western Civilization, is a reaction possible among us? In the West, even in France? Or are you pessimistic even on this point?

Michel Houellebecq – It is not clear [what is needed] in order for this reaction to be efficacious. It is not an easy thing to combat a religious sect. Policemen, at the current time, defuse not a small number of attacks, but a purely police-based response to a religious sect is not assured to win it. In general, religions are the ones that beat other religions.