THE PREDICTIONS OF HOUELLEBECQ
By Michel Houellebecq. William Heinemann.Translated by Lorin Stein. $32.99.

Wise after the event, commentators claim that several recent armed incidents on French trains prefigured the awful attacks in Paris on November 13. The government, they say, should have cracked down sooner on extremist Muslims. And they recall January 7, 2015, the day when Islamists shot 11 people dead in the office of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, and killed another five in a Jewish supermarket.

On that very day, Michel Houellebecq's Submission was published in French, and Charlie Hebdo carried a grotesque cartoon of the author on its cover, under the title "The Predictions of Wizard Houellebecq". A friend of his at the magazine died, and Houellebecq cancelled his book promotions. His five earlier novels had gained him awards, but he had also been accused of obscenity, racism, misogyny and Islamophobia. He had been to court for inciting racial hatred by writing critically of Islam – which he called an absurd and dangerous religion – and was acquitted. But after Charlie Hebdo, many people including the French Prime Minister at once turned on Houellebecq, saying he was the opposite, an Islamic sympathiser.

Houellebecq was the name of Michel Thomas's paternal grandmother, a communist with whom he lived in Paris from the age of six. Before that, he was cared for by his maternal grandmother in Algeria after his mother ran off with a new-age boyfriend. His fiction and poetry critiqued unloving mothers, fringe religions and cult leaders, and gained him a reputation for nihilism. "Anything can happen in life, especially nothing," wrote Houellebecq sourly. Many of his characters, like their creator, suffer malaise, ennui, and anomie, those afflictions which set French intellectuals apart from the bourgeoisie. Rejection of everything bourgeois, it's said, is the only thing French intellectuals agree on.

In Houellebecq's latest novel, the sufferer is François, a solitary man in his 40s who seeks intimacy but rejects it, is attracted to spiritualism but mistrusts it. He teaches 19th-century French literature at the run-down Sorbonne; the welfare state is on its last legs; his latest girlfriend has left him to go to Israel; his parents have died. He has acquaintances, but no friends; he has occasional sex partners, but no girlfriends; and he spends many evenings downloading porn, visiting prostitutes, and eating pre-packaged meals.

François considers the effects of feminism on modern society, and wonders whether everyone would be happier back in their traditional roles. For him, a woman should be a good cook and an energetic sex partner: neither intellect, intimacy nor children come into his calculations. Anticipating what's to come, he notices the growing prevalence of Middle Eastern food in Paris, university bans on Israeli scholars, and the exodus of French Jews. Only the Chinese seem unaffected.

The year is 2022 and Francois, like many French intellectuals, is indifferent to politics, idealism, and belief. Among his acquaintances, those who do take an interest predict the outcome of the presidential elections wrongly. The media suppress images of urban violence. The left throws its lot in with the Muslims − who have become so numerous that they have a strong political party − rather than support the racist National Front of Marine Le Pen. The Muslim Brotherhood wins, and the charismatic moderate Mohammed Ben Abbes becomes president. France is governed by Sharia law, Belgium is following suit, and an Islamic European Union is in prospect. At once, French women start wearing veils. For unexplained reasons the stations are filthy, and the trains stop running on time.

Education and the birth rate are immediate targets for reform. Most children now leave school at 12, no women study or teach at university, and the staff that remain have to convert to Islam to keep their jobs. The Sorbonne is lavishly funded and strictly controlled by Saudi investors, and academics can have several wives, some very young. Alcohol still flows freely at university functions, much to François' relief, and the Middle Eastern canapes are delicious. His life's work on the 19th-century author J.K. Huysmans is complete; the new regime offers to meet his three requirements in life – food, wine and sex; and in exchange for a generous salary, he converts to Islam and gets his academic sinecure back.

All this is satirical, of course, the intention apparently being to amuse the reader as well as to shock the French out of their complacency, but without saying what they should do to avoid the outcome. Like all science fiction or future fiction, the novel depends for its effect on the possibility that these events may come true. And right on cue, Submission came out in English just as more than 219 people were killed in Paris. Until November 13, Houellebecq's witty, erudite fantasy of a peaceful transition to a Muslim-controlled France was almost imaginable: now it's not. He must be drowning his anomie somewhere in Paris, wishing he had ended the novel with a bang, rather than the whimper of the last few pages.

Dr Alison Broinowski is a research affiliate at ANU.