Should Someone Write an English Version of 'Submission'?

On Sunday I briefly mentioned ���Submission���,  Michel Houellebecq���s new novel (newly published, that is,  in English, in a brilliant translation by Lorin Stein. It was published in France smack in the middle of the ���Charlie Hebdo��� murders, which, as we will see, added to its impact, not least because the current edition of the magazine had a caricature of Houellebcq on its cover) . Think of the author���s apparently unpronounceable name as ���Welbeck��� and you won���t be far out.

 

The book���s hero is agreeably unloveable,  a squalid and cynical academic who drinks far too much, subsists on microwaved curries, uses prostitutes and, er, accesses pornography. Quite how he attracts the unattached and personable young women who occasionally solace him, I do not know. After a while, they all write to him and tell him they have ���met someone ���, and I am not surprised.  

Quite a lot of the book is crammed with references to French literature and academic life which I don���t pretend to get,  except vaguely. There are also a few pretty graphic sex scenes which might make it attractive to film or TV producers but seemed to me out of place,  like custard on steak. 

 

Yet it is a captivating read (perhaps thanks to the translator, who is plainly equally at home in English and French, and who is so good that you hardly ever remember that you are reading something originally written in a language utterly different from English).

 

That is because it is (to me) a highly plausible political thriller. French and British culture and politics are nowadays similar enough for almost all his barbs against fashionable commentators and servile academics to stick. They transfer easily from Sorbonne to LSE and from French TV and newspapers to Fleet Street and the BBC.

 

Even France���s largely bankrupt mainstream parties are pretty much interchangeable with Labour and the Tories.  The only difficulty is that there is no real equivalent here to Marine le Pen���s National Front, which under her leadership has moved out of her horrible father���s shadow and become a lot more comparable to UKIP in politics, and a lot bigger.

 

In a narrative punctuated with sex, gluttony, gossip and drinking, plus a strange interlude in a monastery and some sour experiences with the much-overrated TGV train system, we join the hero in his front seat has a front seat as secular, Fifth republic France commits a sort of suicide.

 

Here���s the problem. Neither the French Tories nor French Labour can win the 2022 Presidential election alone. Rather than combine with Marine Le Pen , they do a deal with the Muslim Brotherhood, led by a subtle and diplomatic political genius. Neither of these parties (like their British equivalents) values France. Both have long sought to dissolve it in the EU, though they prefer not to admit this aim. So, deep down, they have no objection to an Islamic France either. Would our pro-EU politicians rather do a deal with Nigel Farage or with a Muslim alliance, if the choice ever arose? 

 

To begin with the deal doesn't seem all that hard to do. The irreducible price is that they must give control of education to Islam. This turns out to be an even bigger step than they realise, as it hands over the future of France to the Muslim faith. Nobody can teach any more ��� including the hero -  unless he converts.  The new Islamic president also begins to bring into being the ���Eurabia��� warned against in Bat Ye���or���s famous book , pursuing the expansion of the EU into North Africa.

 

2022? Probably not. 2037? Highly plausible. Even then, we may not be able to imagine the speed of events if the EU does decide to open its frontiers to millions of young migrants as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)is urging.

 

The only force with any regard for France���s history and nature turns out to be the party everyone denounces as fascists, and which no doubt contains people whose politics and private views are pretty horrible.  Rather than ally with them, a tortured, decayed political establishment falls on its knees before a soft-spoken, politically astute Muslim saviour (Interestingly, in this book, Islam doesn���t demand any renunciation of alcohol, and its main spokesman seems quite happy with the hero���s disastrous boozing, plying him with fig brandy).

 

Houellebecq shows how this process could be quite personally agreeable for some,  at least to start with. Men suddenly find they can have three wives, even if they���re unattractive, because they are once again the source of wealth and power. Economics and employment are transformed by the new religion.  Secular French women start dressing modestly in public because, actually, it���s less effort than the other thing. Conservatives accept that they have more in common with Islam than they do with the gutless Christianity that has long ceased to mean what it says. There���s even a kind of joy in submission, symbolised by a long scene in the Left Bank house where ���The Story of O���, a pornographic masochistic novel so venerable it���s in danger of becoming a classic, was written.

 

The French setting, pleasing to people like me who know Paris reasonably well and have a vague acquaintance with French history and politics (but baffling to those who don���t and haven���t) will probably stop this novel having as much impact here as it should. Perhaps someone should write an English equivalent. But I warn them, it will not be as easy as Houellebecq makes it look.  I hope someone tries. Fiction can have more effect than any amount of truth.