In what he describes as “a gesture of exasperation and rage” following the government’s decision to take military action in Syria, the novelist Michel Faber has sent a copy of his novel The Book of Strange New Things to David Cameron.

In an accompanying letter, Faber tells the prime minister that he realises “a book cannot compete with a bomb in its ability to cause death and misery, but each of us must make whatever small contribution we can, and I figure that if you drop my novel from a plane, it might hit a Syrian on the head”.

Faber, the author of acclaimed novels including The Crimson Petal and the White and Under the Skin, said the move was intended to be “a satirical gesture, just to let off some impotent steam”. “I am donating this copy of my latest novel to the war effort,” he writes to Cameron in a letter which he posted, along with his book, ending his proposal that his novel be dropped from a plane with the line: “With luck, we might even kill a child: their skulls are quite soft.”

Obviously, said Faber, the delivery “is not actually going to do anything”. But he added: “I just felt so heartsick, despondent and exasperated that the human race, and particularly the benighted political arm of the human race, has learned nothing in 10,000 years, 100,000 years, however long we’ve been waging wars, and clearly the likes of Cameron are not interested in what individuals have to say.”

On 2 December, MPs voted by 397 to 223 in favour of carrying out airstrikes on Islamic State targets in Syria. The Ministry of Defence confirmed the next day that the first strikes against Isis had been taken.

Faber highlighted the comments of Conservative MP Johnny Mercer to the BBC, that “this idea that you just chuck a bomb is so out of date ... We are using very precise, very lethal weapons.”

“It’s Nineteen Eighty-Four,” said Faber. “Orwell would weep. Words fail me. And those words, of course, from Mercer, we heard during the Iraq war as well.”

Faber was also against the Iraq war, writing the essay Dreams in the Dumpster, Language Down the Drain for the book Not One More Death, a collection of writing by major names calling for the US and the UK to withdraw their troops from Iraq.

“That essay was about the irrelevance of intelligence, of informed conversation, when we are at the mercy of our rulers who are interested in engaging with nothing of the sort. And of course, the sheer indifference that our rulers have to what we might wish and what might actually be the wise and humane thing to do, is so clear,” said Faber.

The alien setting of The Book of Strange New Things, which is about a missionary who sets out for a planet in a neighbouring galaxy, and which Faber has said will be his last novel, stemmed from his initial plan to write a novel with no humans in it at all, because he was so disgusted by the actions of humanity.

“What the west sadly lacks is the humility to accept that it’s actually not in our power to sort out immensely complicated problems in the world. The only thing that we have the power to do, given that we lack a political class of wisdom and grace, is to make the situation worse by destroying infrastructure, by killing and maiming the citizens of a country that we don’t understand in the least, and radicalising and angering people more than they are already,” he said.

“There is every possibility that in a few months from now there will be a terrorist attack on a shopping centre or a leisure centre or a school in London or Edinburgh or Birmingham. It could well happen, and whoever is going to carry out those attacks, they’re here already, they’re living here. They’re not sitting in an HQ in Iraq, in Syria, waiting for a bomb to drop on them. They live here. And dropping more bombs on Syria is only going to strengthen their resolve to cause harm to people in that shopping centre or that school. And that’s so obvious that even a child could see it. Unfortunately, we’re led by people who have other agendas.”

According to Faber, one of the things that drives “ill-conceived adventures” such as the bombing of Syria “is the fantasy we can do something. That there is an HQ of evil somewhere. It’s all so adolescent male, the idea that something goes wrong and you just find out who the bad guy is and take them out, you drop a bomb on them or you blow them up with a gun or something, and that’s it, sorted.”

The novelist has previously spoken about how he has “despised literature for its impotence to change the world for the better, its inability to dissuade or enlighten the people who do harm”. He maintains this position: “I think literature can console people who are similarly exasperated and angry and heartsick and make them feel they’re not the only souls in the world who are grieved about the perennial stupidity of humanity and particularly of the political class. I don’t think literature can actually change what happens in the wider world. No politician is ever going to be dissuaded from a course of action because literature has something to say on that topic. Politicians don’t read anyway. They’re loftily uninterested in literature, in culture, in the wisdom of the ages. They’re interested in maintaining their status and their power in the brief time that they’re in office,” he said.

Nonetheless, Faber has put his Edinburgh address on the back of the parcel he sent to Downing Street this morning, “just in case Dave ever comes round and wants a cup of tea”.