Dominique Lapierre, the French writer with a passion for India who sold around 50 million copies with his American “writing brother” Larry Collins, has died at the age of 91 on the French Riviera, his widow told the press on Sunday .
“He died of old age at the age of 91,” Dominique Conchon-Lapierre explained in the regional daily Var-Matin.
A philanthropist as well as a prolific writer, he and his “writing brother” Larry Collins had sold some 50 million copies of their six novels, including Is Paris Burning?, translated into forty languages.
Thus, after writing The City of Joy (1985) alone in a Calcutta slum, he gave a good portion of his royalties to the needy people who had inspired him. The novel sold millions of copies and was the subject of a 1992 film directed by Roland Joffé.
In 2005, he affirmed that, thanks to his royalties, donations from readers and income from conferences 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 and develop 540 alcohol water wells and equip four hospital ships in the Ganges Delta in India”.
After “Is Paris Burning?” he continued his fruitful collaboration with Collins: “Where you will wear my mourning” (1968, about the bullfighter El Cordobes), “O Jerusalem” (1972), “This night liberty” (1975, about Indian Independence), The Fifth Horseman (1980, a novel about an atomic bomb) and the thriller Is New York Burning? (2004).
He lived for a long time in a house in Ramatuelle on the Saint-Tropez peninsula, separated from that of Collins (who died in 2005) by a tennis court, acquired with the copyright of “Paris brule-t-he?” (1964, 20 million readers, 30 international editions).
René Clément filmed this story of the liberation of Paris on August 25, 1944 with numerous stars 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 It Was Five Past Midnight in Bhopal (2001) with Spaniard Javier Moro and Once Upon a Time in the USSR (2005) with Jean-Pierre Pedrazzini.
Born on July 30, 1931 in Châtelaillon (Charente-Maritime), he was also a journalist at Paris-Match.