Submission by Michel Houellebecq

The Financial Times began its review of Submission thus:

In chapter 52 of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon speculated about an alternative turn of history. Had Charles Martel not stemmed the tide of Muslim conquest at the battle of Poitiers in 732, he wrote, “perhaps the interpretation of the Koran would now be taught in the schools of Oxford, and her pulpits might demonstrate to a circumcised people the sanctity and truth of the revelation of Mahomet”.

This novel concerning the Islamification of France and eventually the rest of the EU is interesting, despite some implausibility, in that it shows that such a scenario would be enacted by stealth rather than war, through the weakness of liberal democracy that is the happy hunting ground of opportunistic politicians always ready to do a deal regardless of the consequences.
The author uses a broad canvas utilising politics, religion, literature and philosophy interspersed with wry humour and graphic scenes of gratuitous sex.
Francois, the narrator, is a university lecturer on 19th century French literature and specifically that of J K Huysmans who has an almost mystical influence over him.
A bachelor of 44 he is conscious that his intellectual life is winding down. When through political machinations the Muslim leader of an Islamic political party is made president, an edict requiring learning institutions to follow Islamic teaching and barring non-Moslems from lecturing, leads to Francois losing his post.
Like his literary hero, Francois toys with the idea of entering the catholic clergy but, lacking genuine conviction, lapses into his vacuous existence.
Eventually he is offered a post writing the preface for a complete edition of Huysmans' works by a publishing house of high repute that brings him into contact with the direction of the Sorbonne: one of whom is an intellectual sophisticate who has converted to Islam in pursuance of a career in politics. He is very flattering about Francois' work and persuades him to convert to the faith and thereby revive his moribund professional life.

Throughout the novel, passing references are made to the artefacts of a materialistic society, underlining the emptiness at its heart, and it soon becomes clear that Francois is a metaphor for France and its failing national vitality that lays it open to absorption into an Islamic super state embracing all of western Europe.