(Marseille) Dominique Lapierre, French writer passionate about India and who sold some 50 million copies with his American “pen brother” Larry Collins died at the age of 91 on the Côte d’Azur, his widow announced on Sunday to the local press.
“At 91, he died of old age”, explained Dominique Conchon-Lapierre in the regional daily Var-Morningconfident in this interview to be “at peace and serene since Dominique no longer suffers”.
As much a philanthropist as a successful writer, he had sold, with his “pen brother” Larry Collins, some 50 million copies of their six novels, including Is Paris burning?translated into forty languages.
It is thus that after having written, alone, The city of joy (1985), on a slum in Calcutta, he gave a good part of his royalties to the people in misery who had inspired him. The novel has sold millions of copies and was the subject of a film, directed by Roland Joffé, in 1992.
In 2005, he assured that, thanks to his royalties, donations from readers and earnings from conferences delivered around the world, his humanitarian action “had made it possible to cure one million tuberculosis patients in 24 years, treat 9,000 children with leprosy , build 540 drinking water wells and equip four hospital ships on the Ganges delta in India”.
After Is Paris Burning?, he continued his fruitful collaboration with Collins: where you will mourn me (1968, on the bullfighter El Cordobes), O Jerusalem (1972), Tonight freedom (1975, on Indian independence), The Fifth Horseman (1980, fiction around an atomic bomb) and the thriller Is New York Burning? (2004).
For a long time he occupied a residence in Ramatuelle, located on the Saint-Tropez peninsula, separated from that of Collins (who died in 2005) by a tennis court, acquired with the copyright of Is Paris burning?(1964, 20 million readers, 30 international editions).
René Clément made a film of this story of the Liberation of Paris, on August 25, 1944, with a host of famous actors, such as the Frenchman Jean-Paul Belmondo or the American Kirk Douglas. Americans Francis Ford Coppola and Gore Vidal co-wrote the screenplay.
Lapierre also co-wrote, with the Spaniard Javier Moro, It was five past midnight in Bhopal (2001) and, with Jean-Pierre Pedrazzini, Once upon a time in the USSR (2005).
Born July 30, 1931 in Châtelaillon (Charente-Maritime), he was also a journalist at Paris Match.