Houellebecq’s Submission

In 2004 many of us would have shuddered at the thought of someone like Narendra Modi, then Gujarat chief minister, becoming prime minister of the country one day.  In 2014 the nightmare turned real with the Hindutva party BJP –led National Democratic Alliance scoring a sweeping victory in the general elections over a clueless opposition and thereby paving way for Modi being sworn-in as PM.

Fast forward. 2022, not 2017, presidential election in France is the backdrop of Michel Houellebecq’s latest novel Submission (launched on the day of the Charlie Hebdo shooting).  

In Submission Francois, a middle-aged professor and a Huysmanist (Joris-Karl Huysmans is a French novelist) fears, under the prevailing environment, the country will end up in the hands of a Muslim party.  His worst fear comes true when Mohammed Ben Abbes of Muslim Brotherhood, in alliance with the Socialist Party, wins by a landslide.

(How to react: resist or reconcile?)

But with his intellectual life having come to an end, left with his savings and pension and with a Muslim party in power, it suddenly dawns on Francois that life might actually have more to offer.

Before that, faced with the prospect of a Muslim party coming to power his ex-girlfriend Myriam would leave, with her parents and siblings, for Tel Aviv.

The "classy and quietly sexy" Myriam describes Francois as a ‘macho,’ (He replies: Aggression often masks a desire to seduce) but with refined tastes in writers. After completing his dissertation on Huysmans and publishing a book more than ten years ago he feels justified with life and carries on by occasionally contributing articles to journals.  

He reasons:  “but was that enough to justify a life? And why did a life need to be justified? Animals live without feeling the least need of justification, as do the crushing majority of men. They live because they live, and then I suppose they die because they die, and for them that’s all there is to it. If only as a Huysmanist, I felt obliged to do a little better.”

September 8, 2016, 9.18 pm
Meanwhile as France braces up for 2017 presidential poll
http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/france-candidate-alain-juppe-has-inside-track-on-presidency-a-1109913.html

Perils of a second Sarkozy presidency, by Matthew Moran (Le Monde diplomatique - English edition, August 2016) http://mondediplo.com/outsidein/perils-of-a-second-sarkozy-presidency

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