Michel Houellebecq’s most recent novel made a stir, partly as a matter of circumstance. On the publication date of Submission, which describes the ascendancy of a Muslim party in France in the year 2022, the French humor magazine Charlie Hebdo put Houellebecq on its cover in the form of a chain-smoking sorcerer conjuring New Year’s predictions (“In 2015, I lose my teeth. In 2022, I celebrate Ramadan!”), and the Kouachi brothers attacked the magazine’s Paris headquarters and murdered twelve people. When Submission finally arrived in the United States in English translation ten months later, France seemingly had settled into a tense calm. Then Islamic State terrorists attacked Paris again, killing 130 people — including 89 at the Bataclan concert hall — and wounding several hundred more.
Now comes another attack. In July, Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, a 31-year-old Tunisian living in France, drove a cargo truck into a crowd celebrating Bastille Day in Nice, a resort town on France’s southern coast. The attack killed 84 people from more than a dozen countries and wounded 300 others.
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