Submission: A Novel

This is a fictional book written about the near future of France. The main character is a literature professor at the Sorbonne who leads a depressed and dissolute life. The main point is that Western Civilization is dying and France will be the first to go. This book was written in 2015 and is set in 2022.It focuses on the 2022 presidential elections where the two main contenders are the anti-immigrant National Front and the Muslim Brotherhood. Most people are either resigned to a Muslim takeover or want to resist it. Houellebecq predicts that the two centrist parties, who have dominated French politics since World War II, will fall apart at this time. These are the center-left Socialist Party and the center-right Union for a Popular Movement (renamed The Republicans since the book was written). But we now know that the French electorate already abandoned these two main parties in 2017 and elected the independent Macron as president (who has since formed a party called The Republic on March).In 2022 the presidential election results in the usual runoff between the top vote getters where the National Front got the most votes followed by the Muslim Brotherhood. The question is whom will the two centrist parties support. It turns out that the only party which wants to save France is the National Front. The centrist parties have always wanted to have France just be a part of the European Union so they throw their support to the Muslim Brotherhood. The Muslim Brotherhood has a similar objective in that it wants France to be the first victory in forming a European Caliphate. As usual the public follows the elites and the Muslims win.The Muslims waste no time in transforming France and the mainstream parties follow. The Muslims' objective is to make France family-centered so they drastically cut the welfare budget which allows single people to live alone off the welfare system. Meanwhile they strengthen welfare subsidies to families. Then they transform education by making mandatory state education end at age 14. All high schools and universities are privatized which means they have no government support. Most of them become Muslim as Gulf states such as Saudi Arabia fund them. All teachers have to be Muslims at the Muslim schools. Polygamy is enacted but is limited to four wives and all Muslim women have to wear veils. The irony here is that most of the reforms follow the right wing agenda except for the preservation of France.The Sorbonne becomes a Muslim university, everyone is fired, and only Muslims can be hired. So the professor is faced with the choice of whether he wants to become a Muslim to get back into the Sorbonne. Since he is a renown professor he is offered three times his former salary. This is enough for three young wives. He decides to go along with the trend and becomes a Muslim as it is the best deal available.Nevertheless the Muslims realize that they still need to play by the rules of democracy for now. The next presidential election is scheduled for 2027. The public is resigned to the attitude that what must happen will happen so continued Muslim rule is most likely.Meanwhile it is now 2018 and it seems that France cannot possibly become a Muslim state by 2022 as the book predicts. But if you look at 2032 or 2042 it is much more possible. Islam is a growing and confident culture while Western Europe is mired in self-loathing and guilt-mongering with its native population declining. Its culture of extreme individualism has diminished its birth rate and made way for a Muslim takeover. All this confirms the point made by the famous historian Toynbee that civilizations usually die by suicide.

I don't know how to classify this masterpiece of a novel that seems capture the zeitgeist of Europe on the verge of a cultural clash as a result of decades of multiculturalism gone wrong. Thoughtful, decadent, almost modernist, the story follows an indifferent professor who specializes in one poet in particular, who watches as the elections in a not-too-distant Paris create a coalition between an Islamist faction and an a liberal faction. The protagonist lives a life of sexual indulgence and general apathy to life, but is constantly presented with a philosophical alternative in the new Islamic regime that follows the election. The book is pornographic in places, but relentlessly philosophical and imbued with an disillusionment evocative of post-WWI literature like Ernest Hemingway. It's a dark read, but it does leave you thinking about so much more than Islam when its done. Never polemical towards Islam, it is still blunt and realistic about the manner which this Islamic regime takes over France. And no, it's not like a Muslim version of 1984, but more like an Islamic version of Brave New World at least in its moral assessment or at least whatever is being assessed morally, because the main character is patently amoral. If you love philosophical dystopian reads, this book is for you!

The yellow vests show that the French are not as soulless as this author depicts. Stepney are not so easily led astray by sex with submissive girls. This is a leftist pseudo-intelligent story of how Islam won't hurt so much. It's treatment of Christianity is beyond insulting and shows a rare ignorance of the most basic gospel principles. Ignorance is not bliss despite what this author writes. Thank God the French are not really that vapid.

This is the best novel Ive read in years. It is supposedly a satire but is all too believable. The subject matter is the gradual take over in France by the Islamic Party in a stunning general election, and the subsequent, rather easy slide by France into living under Islamic law and traditions. It is scary and totally credible. The writing is gripping.

I'm glad I read it. It's very French. I don't mind its Frenchness at all, in fact it adds to the appeal. But I cannot hide the fact I found the book a disappointment. There are snippets of what is to come but these are few and far between: 'In hindsight, the journalists of the centre left seemed only to have repeated the blindness of the Trojans. History is full of such blindness: we see it among the intellectuals, politicians and journalists of the 1930s, all of whom were convinced that Hitler would 'come to see reason'. There are sounds of distant explosions, and gunfire, but as he says, ' I was struck by my colleagues' lack of concern. They seemed completely unworried, as if none of this had anything to do with them.' The drip drip drip of encroaching doom is therefore well played out, but it is very slow. Meanwhile we are subjected to the main character's sexual fantasies and enactments which seem to be the most important thing to him. It's interesting the author forecasts Turkey joining the EU, which we know about, but also Tunisia, Algeria, and then Egypt. When the new regime inevitably takes over he initially appears disinterested, until one of his close friends acquires a 40 year old wife for 'cooking and cleaning' and a second 15 year old wife 'for the other things'. It's this sexual aspect that inevitably draws him to the new way of life. Crime is lower, and unemployment is solved overnight when women are banned from going to work. Sex is removed from public life altogether because all women are totally covered from head to foot, so even our sex mad main character begins to forget it. It's the slow inevitability of it that is the most convincing; as though all the population of France gave one enormous Gallic shrug and accepted their fate. One would hope this novel is a warning to them not to be so dangerously apathetic in real life.

This dark novel was recommended to me (and hundreds of others of people) by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, when he was giving a public lecture about his book on values in Britain (Reimagining Britain). It's quite a shocker — narrated by a French literature academic at the Sorbonne who has many acquaintances but no friends, and who is sustained by his interest in sex. And then, as could actually happen one of these years, a populist becomes the French president — the leader of the Muslim Fraternity. Soft words are used as dramatic changes are made to everyday life. Women go behind the veil, middle-aged academics acquire 15-year olds as second and third wives. The EU is extended to Muslim countries, as the old civil rights of the west are submerged. Women submit to men, and France submits to Muslim populism... Thanks very much, Archbishop Justin (a fluent French speaker). It's a disturbing (though entertaining) read which reminds you not to take values for granted as you may lose them if you do.

The novelist Anthony Burgess said, back in the seventies, that the decline of institutional Christianity in Europe would leave a vacuum which would be filled by Islam. This marvellous novel, set in the not-too-distant future, is a fictional rendering of this process. It concerns a professor of literature at the Sorbonne going through a midlife crisis while all around him France is in political turmoil. The coming to power of a President representing the French Muslim Brotherhood is very convincingly depicted...as is the slow but determined way in which he then seeks to set about the process of Islamising France. There is no angry or hateful rhetoric in the book. The acquiescence of the French political and cultural elites to the new order is portrayed calmly and objectively. The fictional professor at the heart of the novel, who was previously not very interested in either politics or religion, slowly adjusts to the changing circumstances. Eventually, promised both career advancement and the provision of not one but two wives, he submits to Islam.Essentially this novel is a portrait of a dying and demoralised culture being replaced by a culture that is both vigorous and ambitious. The only criticism I would make of the book is that Michel Houellebecq does not openly point out the supreme irony that France, a nation where being an atheist was once a necessary precondition of being made welcome in intellectual circles...where atheism was a kind of cultural fashion statement...will almost certainly be the first Western European nation to fall under an Islamic dispensation. I see a dark humour in all of this. So would Anthony Burgess, who would have loved this novel.

I really enjoyed this book. Douglas Murray's 'Strange Death of Europe' mentioned it, so I purchased a copy to see what it was all about. In turn, it got me into Houellebecq and I ended up buying 'Atomised', which I also really liked. Some people compare this to Orwell's 1984........ so buy, read it and make up your own mind. Very well written by a pessimistic, but somehow enchanting author. Hie has a number of underlying themes and is clearly very thoughtful and clever.

We live in interesting times politically. Birth rates are collapsing in the western world, yet only fringe groups dismissed as 'alt-right' are willing to discuss the consequences of this. Few intellectuals are willing to grapple with how we can handle this as a society. Houellebecq tackles this in an intriguing way, by posing the question of whether the only way our flaccid, decadent and anti-natal society can be saved is to submit to a conquering force of foreigners with a culture that is perceived as 'alien'. He raises all kinds of questions along the way, does muslim culture actually resembles traditional European Catholic culture more so than our modern progressive religion? Would the European people actually be happier under Sharia law than under our progressive consumer law,, with consumer marriage vows and no-fault divorces? I strongly recommend giving this book a read: help develop your understanding of what needs to be done to fix our broken society.