Jean Raspail | |
|---|---|
 Raspail in 2010 | |
| Born | 5 July 1925 Chemillé-sur-Dême, Indre-et-Loire, France |
| Died | 13 June 2020 (aged 94) Paris, France |
| Occupation | Explorer, novelist, travel writer |
| Notable works | The Camp of the Saints; Moi, Antoine de Tounens, roi de Patagonie |
| Notable awards | Grand Prix du roman de l'Académie française (1981) Prix Maison de la Presse (1995) Grand prix de littérature de l'Académie française (2003) Grande Médaille d'Or des Explorations (2007) Prix Combourg-Chateaubriand (2008) |
Jean Raspail (French pronunciation: [ʒɑ̃ ʁaspaj], 5 July 1925 – 13 June 2020) was a French explorer, novelist, and travel writer. Many of his books are about historical figures, exploration and indigenous peoples. He was a recipient of the prestigious French literary awards Grand Prix du Roman and Grand Prix de littérature by the Académie française. The French government honoured him in 2003 by appointing him to the Legion of Honor, with the grade of Officer.[1][2] Internationally, he is best known for his controversial 1973 novel The Camp of the Saints, which is about mass third-world immigration to Europe.
Born on 5 July 1925 in Chemillé-sur-Dême, Indre-et-Loire, Raspail was the son of factory manager Octave Raspail and Marguerite Chaix. He attended private Catholic school at Saint-Jean de Passy in Paris, the Institution Sainte-Marie d'Antony and the École des Roches in Verneuil-sur-Avre.
During the first twenty years of his career Raspail traveled the world. He led a Tierra del Fuego–Alaska car trek in 1950–52 and, in 1954, a French research expedition to the land of the Incas. Raspail served as Consul General of the Kingdom of Araucanía and Patagonia.[3] In 1981, his novel Moi, Antoine de Tounens, roi de Patagonie (I, Antoine of Tounens, King of Patagonia) won the Grand Prix du Roman (award for a novel) of the Académie française.[4][5]
His traditional Catholicism serves as an inspiration for many of his utopian works, in which the ideologies of communism and liberalism are shown to fail, and a Catholic monarchy is restored. In his 1990 novel Sire a French king is crowned in Reims in February 1999, the 18-year-old Philippe Pharamond de Bourbon, a direct descendant of the last French kings.
In his best known work, The Camp of the Saints (1973), Raspail predicts the collapse of Western civilization from an overwhelming "tidal wave" of Third World immigration. The "hordes" of the world rise and, in the words of playwright Ian Allen, "destroy the white race."[6] The book has been translated into English, German, Spanish, Italian, Afrikaans, Czech, Dutch, Polish, Hungarian and Portuguese, and as of 2006 it had sold over 500,000 copies.[7] After The Camp of the Saints Raspail wrote other novels, including North, Sire, and The Fisher's Ring. Raspail reiterated these views in a co-written 1985 article ("Will France Still Be French in 2015?") for Le Figaro magazine, where he stated "the proportion of France's non-European immigrant population will grow to endanger the survival of traditional French culture, values and identity".[8]
Raspail was a candidate for the French Academy in 2000, for which he received the most votes,[9] yet did not obtain the majority required for election to the vacant seat of Jean Guitton.
An article by Raspail for Le Figaro on 17 June 2004, entitled "The Fatherland Betrayed by the Republic",[10] in which he criticized the French immigration policy, was sued by International League against Racism and Anti-Semitism on the grounds of "incitement to racial hatred", but the action was turned down by the court on 28 October.
In 1970, the Académie française awarded Raspail its Jean Walter Prize for the whole of his work.[11] In 2007 he was awarded the Grande Médaille d’Or des Explorations et Voyages de Découverte by the Société de géographie of France for the whole of his work.[12]
He lived in Neuilly-sur-Seine, near Paris. He died in the Henri-Dunant Hospital on 13 June 2020, aged 94.[13]
