Excerpt from Submission by Michel Houellebecq, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

On my way out of class (what did those two virgins in burkas care about that revolting queen, that self-proclaimed analist, Jean Lorrain? did their fathers realize what they were reading in the name of literature?), I bumped into Marie-Françoise, who proposed lunch. Clearly, it was going to be a social day.

I liked the old bag. She was funny, she was an insatiable gossip, and she'd been at the university long enough, and spent enough time on the right committees, to have better information than anyone would ever entrust to the likes of Steve. She led us to a Moroccan restaurant in the rue Monge. Clearly, it would be a halal day, too.

She got going as soon as the waiter brought our food. Big Delouze was on the way out. The National Council of Universities had been in session since June, and it looked as though they'd choose Robert Rediger to replace her.

Glancing down into my lamb-and-artichoke tagine, I raised my eyebrows. "I know," she said. "It's huge. And it's not just talk—I have it on good authority."

I excused myself, and in the men's room I slipped out my smartphone. You really can find anything on the Internet nowadays. A two-minute search revealed that Robert Rediger was famously pro-Palestinian, and that he'd helped orchestrate the boycott against the Israelis. I washed my hands thoroughly and went back to the table.

My heart sank: my tagine was already getting cold. "Won't they wait for the elections?" I asked, after I'd had a bite. This struck me as a sensible question.

"The elections? The elections? What have the elections got to do with it?" Not so sensible after all, I guessed.

"Oh, I don't know. It's just, in three weeks we might have a new president…"

"Please, that's all settled. It will be just like 2017, the National Front will make it into the runoffs and the left will be voted back in. I don't see why the council should fart around waiting for the elections."

"But there's the Muslim Brotherhood. They're an unknown quantity. If they got twenty percent, it would be a symbolic benchmark, and could change the balance of power…" I was talking utter bullshit, of course. Ninety-nine percent of the Muslim Brotherhood would throw their votes to the Socialists. In any case, it wouldn't affect the results at all, but that phrase the balance of power always sounds impressive in conversation, as if you'd been reading Clausewitz and Sun Tzu. I was also rather pleased with symbolic benchmark. In any case, Marie-Françoise nodded as if I'd just expressed an idea, and she launched into a long disquisition on the possible consequences, for the university leadership, if the Muslim Brotherhood was voted in. Her combinatory intelligence was fully engaged, but I wasn't really listening anymore. I watched the hypotheses flicker across her sharp old features. You have to take an interest in something in life, I told myself. I wondered what could interest me, now that I was finished with love. I could take a course in wine tasting, maybe, or start collecting model airplanes.

* * *

My afternoon seminar was exhausting. Doctoral students tended to be exhausting. For them it was all just starting to mean something, and for me nothing mattered except which Indian dinner I'd microwave (Chicken Biryani? Chicken Tikka Masala? Chicken Rogan Josh?) while I watched the political talk shows on France 2.

That night the National Front candidate was on. She proclaimed her love of France ("But which France?" asked a center-left pundit, lamely), and I wondered whether my love life was really and truly over. I couldn't make up my mind. I spent much of the evening trying to decide whether to call Myriam. I had a feeling she wasn't seeing anyone new. I'd run into her a few times at the university and she had given me a look that one might describe as intense, but the truth was she always looked intense, even when she was choosing a conditioner. I couldn't get my hopes up. Maybe I should have gotten into politics. If you were a political activist, election season brought moments of intensity, whichever side you were on, and meanwhile here I was, inarguably withering away.

Copyright © 2015 by Michel Houellebecq and Flammarion

Translation copyright © 2015 by Lorin Stein