The thought Je suis Charlie races around in my synapses. It’s a cold rainy morning as I head for Albertine, the library at the French Consulate on Fifth Avenue. What I’m looking for is a novelby Michel Houellebecq, one of France’s most controversial and celebrated writers. It was his latest novel, “Submission,” a futurist vision about a clash of Western values with those of radical Islam, that was scheduled for publication the very day that cold-blooded terrorists massacred twelve people at the offices of the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo.

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