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 François – 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.
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Through a series of very plausible connivances and deceits, an Islamic candidate becomes the president of France. This is a brilliant political satire by the only living writer really worth reading any more. the death of the West must include, through its inclusivity, its exclusion. The sense of submission, on a personal & cultural level, is magnificently realised on the page as a pathetic slide. - Jeremy (QBD)
Guest, 17/03/2019
