"Dans une France assez proche de la nôtre, un homme s'engage dans la carrière universitaire. Peu motivé par l'enseignement, il s'attend à une vie ennuyeuse mais calme, protégée des grands drames historiques. Cependant les forces en jeu dans le pays ont fissuré le système politique jusqu'à provoquer son effondrement. Cette implosion sans soubresauts, sans vraie révolution, se développe comme un mauvais rêve. Le talent de l'auteur, sa force visionnaire nous entraînent sur un terrain ambigu et glissant ; son regard sur notre civilisation vieillissante fait coexister dans ce roman les intuitions poétiques, les effets comiques, une mélancolie fataliste. Ce livre est une saisissante fable politique et morale." -- Page 4 of cover.

"In a near-future France, François, a middle-aged academic, is watching his life slowly dwindle to nothing. His sex drive is diminished, his parents are dead, and his lifelong obsession - the ideas and works of the nineteenth-century novelist Joris-Karl Huysmans - has led him nowhere. In a late-capitalist society where consumerism has become the new religion, François is spiritually barren, but seeking to fill the vacuum of his existence. And he is not alone. As the 2022 Presidential election approaches, two candidates emerge as favourites: Marine Le Pen of the Front National, and Muhammed Ben Abbes of the nascent Muslim Fraternity. Forming a controversial alliance with the mainstream parties, Ben Abbes sweeps to power, and overnight the country is transformed. Islamic law comes into force: women are veiled, polygamy is encouraged and, for François, life is set on a new course. Submission is both a devastating satire and a profound meditation on isolation, faith and liking ..." -- goodreads.com

"François, a middle-aged literature professor at Paris III and specialist of Huysmans, feels he is at the end of his career. It has been years since the last time he created any valuable university work. France is in the grip of political crisis. In order to stave off a Front National victory the Socialists ally with the Islamic party and a minor right wing party proposing a charming and physically imposing Islamic candidate for presidency, who wins. He enacts sweeping changes to French laws, privatizing the French University (thereby making François redundant with full pension as only Muslims are now allowed to teach there), putting the equality between men and women to an end, allowing polygamy, and enlarges the European Union with the aim of making it a new Roman Empire, with France at its lead." -- previous cataloger's alternative summary.