Jeanne Kay: In Houellebecq’s world, Islam is never interrogated. It is a monolith that appears fully formed and immutable to the reader and french citizens alike, like the perfect embodiment of their prejudices and fears. When Ben Abbes gets in power, women leave the labour force; polygyny becomes commonplace; education becomes privatised and religious; Jews must flee to Israel; wealthy petro-monarchies of the gulf compete to control key French institutions. It’s as if all of the french Islamophobic fantasies are projected onto what Houellebecq merely calls “Islam” without a hint of either imagination or historical veracity. In fact, the whole book is a projection of Houellebecq’s own fantasies. […] Soumission has been hailed as a new 1984, a visionary novel, but it is in fact exactly the opposite: the agonising convulsion of the dying corpse of straight-white western patriarchy, its trembling rage at its gradual loss of absolute domination, its livid horror at seeing its empire escape. In the end it expresses not the truth about French society, not a reality about the supposed tragic decadence of western civilization, but instead its dominating class’s utter lack of imagination, the pitiful narrowness of its spirit, the absolute scantiness of its potential for thinking the world beyond the walls of its miserable, petty little borders. More here.