Submission (Houllebecq Michel); Random House UK, 2015

As the 2022 French Presidential election looms, two candidates emerge as favourites: Marine Le Pen of the Front National, and the charismatic Muhammed Ben Abbes of the growing Muslim Fraternity. Forming a controversial alliance with the political left to block the Front National’s alarming ascendency, Ben Abbes sweeps to power, and overnight the country is transformed. This proves to be the death knell of French secularism, as Islamic law comes into force: women are veiled, polygamy is encouraged and, for our narrator Franзois – misanthropic, middle-aged and alienated – life is set on a new course.

Submission is a devastating satire, comic and melancholy by turns, and a profound meditation on faith and meaning in Western society.