Was Jean Raspail racist?

Fifty years ago, one of the most controversial books of the late 20th century was published. Camp of the Saints was written by Jean Raspail, a French travel writer, who explained decades later that the idea for the novel had come to him one day in 1972, as he looked out at the Mediterranean from the Côte d’Azur. ‘I don’t know what went through my mind,’ he said. ‘The immigration problem didn’t exist yet. The question suddenly arose: ‘What if they came?’

The book is the story of a million migrants from India, who landed on the south coast of France in an armada of boats. They were welcomed by the left, who saw them as fellow citizens of the world, cheering them on their way to Paris with a cry of ‘We’re all from the Ganges now!’ The French government asked other western nations to do their bit, which they did, and the munificence of Europe emboldened migrants from other countries to make the journey: ‘Endless cascades of human flesh,’ remarked the novel’s narrator.