On January 8th 2015 the Prime Minister of France Manuel Valls exclaimed: “France is not “Enslavement”, France is not Michel Michel Houellebecq!” The reasons of such a reaction to Michel Hoellebecq’s latest novel are clear. Houellebecq speaks about the surprising changes that have taken place in the French culture and traditions we have all known well. And they are predicted to happen in the near future.
Paris, 2022: street fights between extremists are setting the political climate on fire. The National front has a great number of followers and as the strongest political party wants to nominate its own candidate for president. Wishing to prevent this, the liberal bourgeois parties enter into a coalition with the moderate Islamic party. They bring their plan to life, and the first Muslim French President enters the Champs Elysees palace. Houellebecq’s realistic prognosis makes the following descriptions of the new regime, which establishes itself with no resistance in just a few months and drastically changes the whole social life, sound shocking. The Islamic brotherhood, which inherited France as some kind of bankrupt firm, does not intend to create a totalitarian regime as it has been described by Huxley and Orwell. The political changes happen without been noticed, they are democratic and legal. Schools and universities are soon all Muslim, women disappear from public places, and appropriate dress code is introduced along with polygamy. A society accepts the Islamic rules and bans in the same way as before the new quota regulations, the raising of taxes, the rules of separate garbage disposal and privatization of public services.
"My novel is deeply contradictory, it can be read as a story of despair or a story of hope." This angry political thriller by Houellebecq is not addressed against Islam, he is just portraying the disintegration of the western culture. This decay is the result of the gradual destruction of many collective relationships and that world in which the idea of Ego predominated and eventually led to economic, social and moral disaster.
