François even heads back to the monastery in which Huysmans found his faith and in which the young François spent some time in search of his literary idol while a younger man. He sits in front of the same Madonna and his meditations strain towards the same goal. But he cannot do it: he may have returned to the source, and he may even be open to the moment, but he cannot perform the necessary leap of faith. And so he returns to Paris, and there the university authorities – now Islamic – explain to François (who they have generously pensioned off) the logic of Islam. And not just the logic that he will get his career back at the Sorbonne if he converts, but the logic it will make in other corners of his life. He will have wives (up to four, and younger – if he wishes – even than his usual tastes). And of course he will be part of a community of meaning for the first time. He will be able to continue enjoying most of the few pleasures he has had and will gain much more than he had thought possible in the way of comforts. Unlike the leap required to become a Catholic, the logic of Islam is practical and, in a society ripe for submission, becomes irrefutable.

Even before its publication the question around Submission was whether or not the novel’s vision was remotely plausible. Since its publication part of that question seems to have been answered. Endless small details rhyme. For instance, in the run-up to the crucial election the French media and mainstream politicians deliberately obscure stories of real interest. French readers will be reminded of the events in December 2014 in France when Muslim extremists kept driving into crowds of people while shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’, only for the politicians and media to dismiss these events as meaningless traffic incidents. Then there is the portrait of the Jewish community leaders who remain around to flatter their enemies and negotiate for themselves even as everything signals their community’s destruction. And of course the novel’s truest conceit is the depiction of a class of politicians across the political divide so keen to be seen above all as ‘anti-racist’ that they end up flattering and ultimately handing over their country to the worst and most swiftly growing racist movement of their time.

But more important than the political analysis is the societal diagnosis. If there is a reason why Houellebecq towers over most contemporary novelists it is because he recognises the depth and sweep of the questions now facing Western Europe. The most propitious coincidence of his career is that his work came to artistic maturity in time to capture a society tipping from over-ripeness into something else. But what precisely? More decadence and barbarism, or salvation? And if salvation, then what kind, and whose?

17. The end

17

The end