The French author, both philanthropist and successful writer, died at the age of 91. He had notably sold some 50 million copies of his novels co-wrote with the American Larry Collins, whose “Paris burns?”.
Mo12345lemonde with AFP
The successful French writer Dominique Lapierre died at the age of 91 on the Côte d’Azur, announced his widow, Sunday December 4, in the Var-Matin Regional Daily . “He died of old age,” explained Dominique Conchon-Lapierre, confident in this interview “in peace and serene since Dominique no longer suffers”.
Dominique Lapierre, who was also a journalist at Paris-Match, lived in Ramatuelle (Var) near Saint-Tropez for around sixty years. A long time ago a home separated by a tennis court from that of the American Larry Collins (died in 2005), with whom he wrote Paris burns? (1964).
This story of the Liberation of Paris, August 25, 1944, will be read by 20 million readers in thirty international editions and brought to the cinema in 1966 by René Clément with a host of stars like the French Jean-Paul Belmondo or L ‘American Kirk Douglas. The Americans Francis Ford Coppola and Gore Vidal had co -signed the scenario.
After Paris burns ?, He had continued his fruitful collaboration with Collins: where you will wear my mourning (1968) on the bullfighter El Cordobes, O Jerusalem (1972), this night Liberty (1975) on the ‘Independence of India, the fifth rider (1980) a fiction around an atomic bomb, and does the Thriller New York burns? (2004). In total, he sold with his American “pen” brother some 50 million copies of their six novels.
Dominique Lapierre was as successful as a philanthropist. After having written alone the City of Joy (1985) about a slum of Calcutta, he gave a good part of his copyright to people in the misery who had inspired him. The novel was a total of millions of copies and was the subject of a film directed by Roland Joffé in 1992.
In 2005, this enthusiast of India assured that, thanks to his copyright, donations of readers and the gains of conferences pronounced worldwide, his humanitarian action “had made it possible to cure in twenty-four years a million tuberculosis, treat 9,000 leper children, build 540 drinking water wells and arm four hospitals on the Ganges delta in India “.
Dominique Lapierre also co-written, with the Spaniard Javier Moro it was midnight five in Bhopal (2001) and, with Jean-Pierre Pedrazzini, there was once the USSR (2005).
Born July 30, 1931 in Châtelaillon (Charente-Maritime), the writer had been a resident for a few years of a nursing home (accommodation establishment for dependent elderly people) in the city of Sainte-Maxime, according to the newspaper.