Where Houellebecq stands in all this is almost impossible to say. He denies that he is simply an agent provocateur but it is hard not to conclude that he is throwing as many bombs at the French cultural and political establishment as he possibly can. It is as if he is saying that a corrupt and materialist France is so beyond reform, so beyond redemption, that it deserves whatever it gets, even if that amounts to political or religious extremism. More than that, Submission reads as a sustained piece of authorial self-loathing. But does Houellebecq offer any more than a retreat into misogynist bile? Is Submission a work of prophecy? Does it have a political message? If so, it is a message that few could take comfort from, as it would challenge our very understanding of human liberty and human dignity. Rather, Houellebecq seems to want to ask a more fundamental question: upon what spiritual foundation will those who come after us live? As he has Rediger remark, without Christianity the nations of Europe have become “bodies without souls — zombies”.

And this is why Houellebecq’s constant reference to Huymans is more than a playful literary allusion. À Rebours ends with a damning critique of the imbecility and depravity of a decayed nobility and is no less sneering in its denunciation of a bourgeoisie whose rise to power has meant “the suppression of all intelligence, the negation of all honesty, the destruction of all true art”. Could it be, Des Esseintes asks, that “this slime would go on spreading until it covered with its pestilential filth this old world where now only seeds of iniquity sprang up and only harvests of shame were gathered?” “Lord,” he concludes, “take pity on the Christian who doubts, on the unbeliever who would fain believe, on the galley-slave of life who puts out to sea alone, in the night, beneath a firmament no longer lit by the consoling beacon-fires of the ancient hope.” Is this dark vision of France, “the eldest daughter of the Church”, finally becoming reality?