The Camp of the Saints () is a 1973 French dystopian fiction novel by Jean Raspail. A speculative fictional account, it depicts the destruction of Western civilization through mass Third World immigration to France and the Western world. The name of the book comes from a passage in the Book of Revelation depicting the apocalypse. Almost 40 years after its initial publication, the novel returned to the bestseller list in 2011. It was first published in French in 1973 by Éditions Robert Laffont. It was first translated into English by Norman Shapiro, and first published in English by Scribner in 1975.
On its publication, the book received praise from some prominent French literary figures, and through time has also been praised by some critics and politicians in Europe and the United States. It has also been criticized by both French and English-language commentators for conveying racist, xenophobic, nativist, and anti-immigration themes. The novel is popular within far-right and white nationalist circles.
Background
The novel was authored by novelist and explorer Jean Raspail. He had written several books before The Camp of the Saints, mostly travel works or adventure fiction. Several sources noted the book to be very different from the rest of his writings. Raspail has said his inspiration came while at the French Riviera in 1972, as he was looking out at the Mediterranean, he had a "vision": In Raspail's story, the camp of the saints is Europe and Satan's army is a migrant fleet of a million people sailing from India. The publisher believed the book would sell well, and to market the book printed 20,000 copies for an initial run and wrote over 350 letters marketing the book to established French booksellers. The publisher portrayed its publication as a major literary event, with a major ad-campaign that used the phrase "the end of the white world is near". The English translation sold well. and Sphere Books in London. John Tanton acquired the rights to the book in 1994 and printed a softcover edition through his publishing company The Social Contract Press This changed in 2025 when the book received a second English translation, done by Ethan Rundell, and was republished by Vauban Books. Ryan Lenz, a senior investigative reporter for the SPLC, notes that "[t]he premise of Camp of the Saints plays directly into that idea of white genocide. It is the idea that through immigration, if it's left unchecked, the racial character and content of a culture can be undermined to the point of oblivion." The novel is popular within far-right and white nationalist circles.
Reception
The book has been criticized by both French and English-language commentators for conveying racist, xenophobic, nativist, and anti-immigration themes.
Initial reception
The Camp of the Saints received an initially positive reception in France, including from prominent literary figures on the political right, It was praised by journalist Bernard Pivot and intellectuals such as Jean Anouilh, Hervé Bazin, Michel Déon, Thierry Maulnier, and Louis Pauwels. Anouilh called it "a haunting book of irresistible force and calm logic". Paul Gray writing for Time magazine panned the novel as a "bilious tirade" that only required a response because it "arrives trailing clouds of praise from French savants" and from an established publisher.
Jeffrey Hart, in a National Review article, mocked the rejection of the novel by critics, deriding them as "respectable, comfortable reviewers", and lauded the book in those terms: "in freer and more intelligent circles in Europe, the book is a sensation and Raspail is a prize-winner [...] his plot is both simple and brilliant." Syndicated columnist Garry Wills condemned the embrace of the novel by the "more 'respectable' channels" of American right-wing media, including Jeffrey Hart, drawing parallels between the "racial implications" of the book and the National Reviews "overtly racist analysis" of school integration efforts.
Later reception
In 1983, Linda Chavez called the novel "a sickening book", describing it as "racist, xenophobic and paranoid". In the early 1980s, the director of the French intelligence service SDECE, Alexandre de Marenches, gave a copy of the book to Ronald Reagan, who reportedly stated that he was "terribly impressed" with it. Neo-conservative writer Daniel Pipes has cited the work in the context of the "Islamization of the European continent", while Ronald F. Maxwell, who sympathized with the book's themes, considered making a feature film out of the novel.
William F. Buckley Jr. praised the book in 2004 as "a great novel" that raised questions on how to respond to massive illegal immigration, and in 2014, Mackubin Thomas Owens noted Buckley's praise of it, while remarking that "Raspail was ahead of his time in demonstrating that Western civilization had lost its sense of purpose and history—its 'exceptionalism'." In 2005, the conservative Chilton Williamson praised the book as "one of the most uncompromising works of literary reaction in the 20th century". A review in The Times of the second English translation called it "savagely, even gleefully, racist" in its depiction of the migrants, but also "closely, horribly relevant to our dilemmas". It has also been promoted by Trump's White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy and United States Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller, A 2001 report from the SPLC described the novel as "the favorite racist fantasy of the anti-immigrant movement in the US".