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As the novel opens, France is in the midst of a general election hotly contested by three parties — the governing Socialists, the right-wing National Front and the Muslim Brotherhood. The Islamists and Socialists finish in a dead heat; in the subsequent runoff election, the Muslim Brotherhood takes office.

The message I took from the novel Submission is that it is already too late. Western civilization has lost its core beliefs, and its will to survive.

The next morning, Francois observes that the students seem “tense and anxious,” except for girls wearing burkas, who “moved slowly and with new confidence, walking down the very middle of the hallway, three by three, as if they were already in charge.” Soon, some of the buildings on campus are emblazoned with a gold star and a crescent moon

In office, the Islamists demonstrate their priorities: “What they care about is birthrate and education. To them it’s simple — whichever segment of the population has the highest birthrate, and does the best job of transmitting its values, wins. If you control the children, you control the future.”

Without fanfare, Sharia law is introduced throughout France. Francois (himself “about as political as a bath towel”) discovers what Islam (the word means “submission”) is like in practice — academic survival, even advancement, will be possible for him but only if he converts to Islam. Francois, an atheist, has no particular reason not to convert, but before he can make any decision about it, the Sorbonne is closed, mid term, and no date is announced for its reopening.

Houellebecq is a skillful writer (his previous novel The Map and the Territory won the Prix Goncourt in 2010), capable of such a delicious sentence fragment as this: “a strange oppressive mood settled over France, a kind of suffocating despair, all-encompassing but shot through with glints of insurrection.” The glints are quickly extinguished.