7.2 /10 1 Votes
Original title Soumission Publication date 7 January 2015 Pages 320 Originally published 7 January 2015 Page count 320 Published in english 10 September 2015 | 3.6/5 Goodreads Language French Published in English 10 September 2015 ISBN 978-2-08-135480-7 Country France | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Publisher Groupe Flammarion (France) Similar Michel Houellebecq books, Other books | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Submission (French: Soumission) is a novel by French writer Michel Houellebecq. The French edition of the book was published on 7 January 2015 by Flammarion, with German (Unterwerfung) and Italian (Sottomissione) translations also published in January. The book instantly became a bestseller in France, Germany and Italy. The English edition of the book, translated by Lorin Stein, was published on 10 September 2015.
Contents
The novel, a political satire, imagines a situation in which a Muslim party upholding traditionalist and patriarchal values is able to win the 2022 presidential election in France with the support of the Socialist Party. The book drew an unusual amount of attention because, by a macabre coincidence, it was released on the day of the Charlie Hebdo shooting.
Plot
In 2022, François, a middle-aged literature professor at Paris III and specialist in Huysmans, feels he is at the end of his sentimental and sexual lives – composed largely of year-long liaisons with his students. It has been years since the last time he created any valuable university work. France is in the grip of political crisis – in order to stave off a National Front victory, the Socialists ally with the newly formed Muslim Brotherhood Party, with additional support of the Union for a Popular Movement, formerly the main right-wing party. They propose the charming and physically imposing Islamic candidate, Mohammed Ben-Abbes, for the presidency against the National Front leader Marine Le Pen. In despair at the emerging political situation, and the inevitability of antisemitism becoming a major force in French politics, François' young and attractive Jewish girlfriend, Myriam, emigrates to Israel. His mother and father die. He fears that he is heading towards suicide, and takes refuge at a monastery situated in the town of Martel, Lot. The monastery is an important symbol of Charles Martel's victory over Islamic forces in 732; it is also where his literary hero, Huysmans, became a lay member.
Ben-Abbes wins the election, and becomes President of France. He pacifies the country, enacts sweeping changes to French laws, privatizing the Sorbonne, and thereby making François redundant with full pension as only Muslims are now allowed to teach there. He also ends gender equality, allowing polygamy. Several of François' intellectually inferior colleagues, having converted to Islam, get good jobs and make arranged marriages with attractive young wives. The new president campaigns to enlarge the European Union to include North Africa, with the aim of making it a new Roman Empire, with France at its lead. In this new, different society, with the support of the powerful politician Robert Rediger, the novel ends with François poised to convert to Islam and the prospect of a second, better life, with a prestigious job, and wives chosen for him.
The novel mixes fiction with real people: besides Le Pen, François Hollande, François Bayrou and Jean-François Copé, among others, fleetingly appear as characters in the book.
Themes
Houellebecq commented about the novel in an interview with The Paris Review:
Steven Poole, writing for The Guardian, noted that the book was "arguably, not primarily about politics at all. The real target of Houellebecq's satire — as in his previous novels — is the predictably manipulable venality and lustfulness of the modern metropolitan man, intellectual or otherwise". Adam Shatz, writing for the London Review of Books, states that it "is the work of a nihilist not a hater – the jeu d’esprit of a man without convictions".
Publication
On 5 January 2015, French president François Hollande announced in an interview for France Inter radio that he "would read the book, because it’s sparking a debate".
The author appeared in a caricature on the front page of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo on 7 January 2015, the day when the offices of the newspaper were attacked by masked gunmen who killed eight Charlie Hebdo employees. The title on the cover was: "Les prédictions du mage Houellebecq : en 2015, je perds mes dents, en 2022, je fais ramadan." (English: "The predictions of the sorcerer Houellebecq: In 2015, I lose my teeth. In 2022, I observe Ramadan.")
On the day of the publishing of the book and hours before the attack on Charlie Hebdo, Houellebecq said in an interview for France Inter radio:
The German translation (Unterwerfung) by Norma Cassau and Bernd Wilczek was published on 16 January 2015 by DuMont Buchverlag. Lorin Stein translated the book into English.
Reception
The book was an "instant" bestseller.
Several critics, including Bruno de Cessole of Valeurs Actuelles and Jérôme Dupuis of L'Express, compared the novel to Jean Raspail's 1973 novel The Camp of the Saints, a satire about the political impotence of Europe during a massive wave of immigration from India. Grégoire Leménager of Le Nouvel Observateur downplayed the similarities to The Camp of the Saints, as Submission does not deal with ethnicity, and instead placed Houellebecq's novel within a trend of recent French novels about immigration and Islam, together with La Mémoire de Clara by Patrick Besson, Dawa by Julien Suaudeau and Les Événements by Jean Rolin, speculating that the concept of the "Great Replacement" ("Grand Remplacement"), as formulated by Renaud Camus, was becoming fashionable as a literary device.
Le Pen stated in an interview with France Info radio that the novel is "a fiction that could one day become reality."
Stage adaptation
A monologue stage performance with Edgar Selge as François toured Germany in early 2016 with dates in Hamburg, Dresden and Berlin. According to Die Zeit, interest in the story was piqued by recent sexual assaults by migrants in Germany.