Stage adaptations of French author Michel Houellebecq’s novel “Submission”, in which a Muslim president takes power in 2022 France, have been a hit in Germany where a huge Mideast refugee influx has stoked fears of the impact of Islamic culture.
The first German theatre version sold out in the northern city of Hamburg, while in Dresden, birthplace of the Islamophobic PEGIDA street movement, a play premiered last weekend, with a third adaptation planned for Berlin in late April.
“It seems like it’s a very timely story because everybody, each in their own way, picks up on a point of the topic that concerns them,” actor Edgar Selge, who plays the central character Francois in Hamburg’s Deutsches Schauspielhaus theatre, told AFP.
