I have loved trees and felt a kinship with them from childhood. I vividly remember learning to identify a tree from its form and the shape of its leaves in the fifth grade and how pleasing these discoveries were. I began to draw trees and leaves then and felt so...

Michel Houllebecq’s new novel, published in January, appearing in English in September, closes with the narrator’s imminent conversion to Islam, his return to teaching at an Islamic Sorbonne, his appointment as editor of the Pléaide edition of Joris-Karl Huysmans’...