Jean Raspail

Jean Raspail (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. 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. 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. 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 rest…