The Camp of the Saints

Five stars according to the store says "I love it." No.

This is a classic and not one bit of I love it. There is a reason people are reading it now and talking about it. Those facts are not because they love it. But because fiction is often more truthful in exposing reality than non-fiction.

One of the few Must Reads from the latter part of the 20th century which is still a Must Read.

Considering the book was wrote in 1973, everything can be applied as if it were today. A Revelation. Eye-opener. Suggest that anyone that cares about the world population and politics should read this book.

His main point is that a culture cannot continue its success when it is diluted, invaded, infiltrated, whatever word you want to use, by an "alien" culture. For example, if every Syrian "refugee" who wanted to emigrate to Italy actually did it, then Italy would cease to be Italy and would become Syria with all of its problems. A slow trickle of aliens who are eager to assimilate into their new culture will work. Hundreds of thousands of Poles, Germans, French, Irish, etc... came to the USA in the late 1800s, early-mid 1900s. While they did congregate into ethnic neighborhoods for support, for the most part they assimilated into the American culture. They learned English, their children were raised as Americans, and so on. There is nothing wrong with celebrating your ancestry in your own home but remember why you left and do not bring those problems here. Simply plopping down in a wealthy society will not make you wealthy any more than dropping inner city thugs into a nice suburb will suddenly transform them into productive members of society. The "oh-so-concerned" crowd has forgotten or never understood what it took to create Western wealth so they do not value those behaviors.The Gods of the Copybook Headings will prevail!

You want to read about what the end of civilisation as we know it might look like? Would you like to see how a movement like political correctness or the PC people will kill the natural instinct of man and ruin the world? Then this is the book for you.
The frightening thing is this could not just happen, but in fact, it appears to be happening as we read this. The style is a little old fashioned (remember this was written 30 years ago) and some readers will not identify with the hero's of this story, but that doesn't matter. When you read this you can see what could happen and that is the message, don't let it happen, fight back, read this and seek out those who can still think for themselves and are prepared to defend what they believe and their way of life.

When you read this think about those around you, who is it that doesn't just go with the flow, who is it that stands for something or states unpopular thoughts, if it is you, watch out.

We are told everyday how it is important to respect the views of those who are not like us, we need to remember the value of every civilisation, including our own before it is too late. There are some racist undertones and it is a bit us and them but the odds have changed since it was written and are now even worse for us at 10 to 1. This is not a book about color or race, it is about poverty vs. wealth, and two different worlds colliding.

Chilling and overwhelming, not for the feint of heart, you almost feel you are there and can smell the BS.

Why are so many people upset about this fictional work? It's just a story about a fictional scenario where western civilization is threatened by mass immigration from third world countries. Everyone knows that in reality third world immigrants only make countries which were built by gentile-white people better, cleaner, safer, more prosperous, less corrupt, and more peaceful, because those are the predominate characteristics of the third world societies. Diversity is our greatest strength. Just look at what Africans have done for Detroit and Haiti. Enjoy the book. It's just an entertaining piece of fiction.

Incisive as the surgeon's scalpel. Mssr. Raspail performs a full postmortem on the still living patient: humanity. --If you are one of those who find it difficult to read fiction, as it is merely social satire in disguise, and far less humorous than our daily reality in this politically correct world of ours, ...drumroll..., --This is a novel that you can read deeply and enjoy new discoveries on every page. Not, however, for the faint of heart. Nevertheless, a Masterpiece in Literature, par excellance.

It's a tragic comedy. Definitely offensive. Thought provoking, but only because I had to find some way to justify reading it once I started it. .

I kept reading to try and understand another's views and opinions. It made me cringe more than I would have liked to on any night before bed.

It will leave you saying, "Wow...I cannot believe I am reading this," and, "Wow, what kind of damage control will come from me telling people that I bought this book and I plan on reading it?" Don't forget, "Wow...now that's racist," and, "Wow, this is pretty sick."

At the same time, if you can look passed all of the above, it offers an interesting view on the relationship between the West and third-world countries. It's so coarse though. Definitely only for a mature adult.

An ominous portrayal of what Europe is going through today... written in 1975. If ever you wondered whether what we're seeing was predictable, read this book: It was. If you want to know where things are heading, read this book and weep for what will be lost.

This novel is even more relevant today as Europe, in all its feel good self delusion, attempts to deal with the aftermath of admitting more than one million "refugees." Western foolishness and naive "compassion" will be it's undoing.

Very appropriate for our current time. Even though published in 1973, it reads like todays newspapers except for the main invaders. Very thought provoking when you consider what is happening today in Europe and America. I would suggest for anyone that reads this book, to go to the back and read "Afterword" by the author as to why he wrote this book and his motivation. Reminds me of Tolkien when he said that he was not sure if what he wrote (LOTR) was from imagination or memory.

Raspail was either very prescient or knew in fact that the liberals in Europe would welcome the enslought (migration, invasion) of another culture. The West is becoming weaker by the year. Soon 50% of the world's population will live in Africa. They want what the West has without the skills to produce it themselves.

There are plenty of detailed reviews but wanted to add my 5 star opinion in the ratings. It's amazing to me Jean saw all of this in 1973 and before. It's so accurate today and it's fruition is manifesting rapidly in Europe with a million Middle East invaders this last round flooding Germany. Welcomed by the communist traitor Merkel. She should suffer the fate others have of high treason. America is well under way to receiving a Middle East air lift of all the wrong people. Exactly when did third worlders have a right to enter this nation? Because any call to close or responsibly limit it is instantly labeled as racist. There is no reference to historical controls and time for assimilation. It's all about division and hyphenated Americans vs another group. This nation is fast approaching Balkanization.

BRILLIANT! We read this for our book club, and it was just brilliant! Total stone-cold truth which the schools and media refuses to report. This is HISTORY. This book was written in the early 70s and has become reality. It shows the reader what the result of political correctness has given us, a defenseless, bankrupt, self-hating race. The influx of anti-Europeans are infiltrating Europe, and in a few years, they will be on our shores.

Buying a few for Christmas, I decided. Going to give the gift of intelligence and self-preservation!

When you read this magnificent novel you will be truly startled, verging on disbelief, that it was written 45 years ago. It would be little different if it had been written yesterday.

The story perfectly captures the essence of the Third World migrant invasion of the white world of Europe, USA & Canada, Australia,... and the weakness of the people who are unwilling to resist it. In 1973 Raspail already understood that the combination of great wealth and humane character would eventually lead to an existential confrontation with invading impoverished hordes.

I have given this 5 stars for prescience, not because "I love it".

I couldn't put it down as it describes what is happening now so accurately.

One of the most striking parallels is the leftist South American Pope called Benedict XVI. We have a Peronist Pope, successor to Benedict XVI, but the descriptions fit Pope Francis.

Recent flotillas of refugees from Africa and Syria caused a few bookworms and pundits to name-check this 1973 novel. Liberals practically put "scare quotes" around a mention of what they term a racist screed. Conservatives may praise it as a "classic." I knew of it way back via the maverick Garrett Hardin's perspective; he appealed if in different aspects to both ends of the political spectrum.

It popped into my mind the other day so I sat down and read it. It took two sittings. Raspail, as here translated by Norman Solomon, has a feverish, testy style that Michel Houllebecq, in his formative years in France, I suspect may well have come across. However, as Houllebecq's own mordant fiction gains the same condemnations in bien-pensant right-thinking and left-leaning circles as Raspail's book, readers familiar with H. may find an encounter with R. bracing, infuriating, or baffling.

Raspail is credited on the blurb for The Camp of the Saints as a prize-winning author in his native land. Yet this novel flails from the get-go. The end of the story, or near it, jumbles up chronology. The sneering tone of the misanthropic narrator, the overabundant detail, the cardboard characters, the fact you don't care about anyone in the entire storyline: Raspail has scores to settle, but whether you'll be cheering him on or chasing him away depends not only on your own ideological bent, but your tolerance (a theme put through the wringer herein) for prattling. Raspail has it in for his countercultural era of the slightly aging hippies and the faux radicals of the early 1970s. He also despises the press, and some of the admittedly best barbs come as his narrator skewers the posturing.

I thought of the New York Times, for instance, when I found a similar send-up of earnestly PC journalists, who lambaste capitalism and despise corporations and capitalism in the same pages whose sponsors are those fat cats, and whose underwriting, so to say, supports the fulsome claptrap.

The key criticism, as Hardin reminded American readers decades ago, is that the "lifeboat" (here not symbol but story itself, multiplied all over the ocean as refugees set sail for Europe and the rest of whatever is the Western world circa 1973) cannot hold everyone. Either the rich have to share, and become poor themselves as such largess will not balance but tip over everyone into poverty, or they have to defend their realms with force, and "contempt" as Raspail later put it, lest they lose it all.

Odd tangents speckle this work. Clement Dio, a preening poser of the Third World solidarity his own bloodline allows him to capitalize on in more ways than one, is the best of a bad lot. But Raspail's mouthpiece hates worker-priests (back when there were enough clergy to go around), and the Dominicans (not for once the Jesuits) come in for comeuppance. Funny that one Benedict XVI reigns. Along with the Church, the unions, the press, and the military all get their turn at this "roast."

Yes, Raspail makes some points early on about the hypocrisy of the West, the implosion of its value system in a secularizing (well, not quite as it's still France in the post-Vatican II guitar mass phase) and skeptical society, and the contradictions inherent in the post-colonial world supported by the five (now more like six and a half) billion whose labor and losses prop up the seven hundred million whites. "The Last Chance Armada" makes a few at first hesitate but the pressure to welcome the human tide from over the sea leads many addled or idealistic Westerners, guilt ridden and excited to expiate their sins of neglect and greed, to proclaim "We Are All Ganges Now" as the first wave from India crests and others then join the exodus to the Northern Hemisphere, at least the wealthy part.

The narrative, such as it is, lurches through scenes of the army, a strange tangent with Benedictine monks, the chattering classes, a token couple from the working class, and those in factories and offices who find, as all anticipate the Easter Sunday mass landing of the sordid ships and their cargo, the early advantages taken by those in France itself who have earlier emigrated, and who maneuver their own prospects, eased by the care or fear taken by their "host nation," as it capitulates to them too

Interesting idea. Promising set-up. Fumbled execution. Fizzled climax. Ho-hum resolution as the narrator and Raspail seem too wearied or jaded to bother carrying on after so many pages of rants.
However, the relevance of this scenario cannot be gainsaid. Look at the headlines.

A great classic and very good translation. This becomes the third classic of modern literature dealing with the decline of the West - Brave New World, 1984, and Camp of the Saints.

Required reading if you want to understand the forces that have, and are shaping the decline of industrial civilization.

As you look across Sweden, France, Germany and the Netherlands, you will find the prophetic elements in this book to be very jarring.
I will be purchasing a hard copy of this as it is something I simply must have on a bookshelf for my kids to read when they come of age.
Well written, sometimes harsh; this book highlights not only the virtue signalling that has now become common place among political elites, but also the lack of will of the people to oppose the tide of misery or to stand against the cultural change it carries with it. A brilliant book.

Recent flotillas of refugees from Africa and Syria caused a few bookworms and pundits to name-check this 1973 novel. Liberals practically put "scare quotes" around a mention of what they term a racist screed. Conservatives may praise it as a "classic." I knew of it way back via the maverick Garrett Hardin's perspective; he appealed if in different aspects to both ends of the political spectrum.

It popped into my mind the other day so I sat down and read it. It took two sittings. Raspail, as here translated by Norman Solomon, has a feverish, testy style that Michel Houllebecq, in his formative years in France, I suspect may well have come across. However, as Houllebecq's own mordant fiction gains the same condemnations in bien-pensant right-thinking and left-leaning circles as Raspail's book, readers familiar with H. may find an encounter with R. bracing, infuriating, or baffling.

Raspail is credited on the blurb for The Camp of the Saints as a prize-winning author in his native land. Yet this novel flails from the get-go. The end of the story, or near it, jumbles up chronology. The sneering tone of the misanthropic narrator, the overabundant detail, the cardboard characters, the fact you don't care about anyone in the entire storyline: Raspail has scores to settle, but whether you'll be cheering him on or chasing him away depends not only on your own ideological bent, but your tolerance (a theme put through the wringer herein) for prattling. Raspail has it in for his countercultural era of the slightly aging hippies and the faux radicals of the early 1970s. He also despises the press, and some of the admittedly best barbs come as his narrator skewers the posturing.

I thought of the New York Times, for instance, when I found a similar send-up of earnestly PC journalists, who lambaste capitalism and despise corporations and capitalism in the same pages whose sponsors are those fat cats, and whose underwriting, so to say, supports the fulsome claptrap.

The key criticism, as Hardin reminded American readers decades ago, is that the "lifeboat" (here not symbol but story itself, multiplied all over the ocean as refugees set sail for Europe and the rest of whatever is the Western world circa 1973) cannot hold everyone. Either the rich have to share, and become poor themselves as such largess will not balance but tip over everyone into poverty, or they have to defend their realms with force, and "contempt" as Raspail later put it, lest they lose it all.

Odd tangents speckle this work. Clement Dio, a preening poser of the Third World solidarity his own bloodline allows him to capitalize on in more ways than one, is the best of a bad lot. But Raspail's mouthpiece hates worker-priests (back when there were enough clergy to go around), and the Dominicans (not for once the Jesuits) come in for comeuppance. Funny that one Benedict XVI reigns. Along with the Church, the unions, the press, and the military all get their turn at this "roast."

Yes, Raspail makes some points early on about the hypocrisy of the West, the implosion of its value system in a secularizing (well, not quite as it's still France in the post-Vatican II guitar mass phase) and skeptical society, and the contradictions inherent in the post-colonial world supported by the five (now more like six and a half) billion whose labor and losses prop up the seven hundred million whites. "The Last Chance Armada" makes a few at first hesitate but the pressure to welcome the human tide from over the sea leads many addled or idealistic Westerners, guilt ridden and excited to expiate their sins of neglect and greed, to proclaim "We Are All Ganges Now" as the first wave from India crests and others then join the exodus to the Northern Hemisphere, at least the wealthy part.

The narrative, such as it is, lurches through scenes of the army, a strange tangent with Benedictine monks, the chattering classes, a token couple from the working class, and those in factories and offices who find, as all anticipate the Easter Sunday mass landing of the sordid ships and their cargo, the early advantages taken by those in France itself who have earlier emigrated, and who maneuver their own prospects, eased by the care or fear taken by their "host nation," as it capitulates to them too

Interesting idea. Promising set-up. Fumbled execution. Fizzled climax. Ho-hum resolution as the narrator and Raspail seem too wearied or jaded to bother carrying on after so many pages of rants.
However, the relevance of this scenario cannot be gainsaid. Look at the headlines.

A great classic and very good translation. This becomes the third classic of modern literature dealing with the decline of the West - Brave New World, 1984, and Camp of the Saints.

Required reading if you want to understand the forces that have, and are shaping the decline of industrial civilization.

As you look across Sweden, France, Germany and the Netherlands, you will find the prophetic elements in this book to be very jarring.
I will be purchasing a hard copy of this as it is something I simply must have on a bookshelf for my kids to read when they come of age.
Well written, sometimes harsh; this book highlights not only the virtue signalling that has now become common place among political elites, but also the lack of will of the people to oppose the tide of misery or to stand against the cultural change it carries with it. A brilliant book.

You race-aholics have it wrong...as usual. The message of this book deals with survival, not race. Consider this imperfect illustration. You are the captain of a ship. In the middle of the ocean the ship explodes and sinks very rapidly. Only one life boat with a capacity of 50 survives. There is no time for any type of selection process. Those closets to the life boat scramble upon it just in time. You happen to be one of the fortunate ones and since you were captain of the ship, you also are the captain of the lifeboat. You can plainly see that there was no racism involved in regard to who is on board the boat, because there was no means of discrimination due to the suddenness of the sinking. Since the lifeboat is filled to the maximum 50, it is only inches above the water line. One more occupant and everyone would be lost. There are numerous people of all races swimming toward the life boat begging to be allowed on board. For the sake of the survival of the 50, you can't permit any of these people on board. It is better that 50 survive rather than none. Your decision had nothing to do with race and everything to do with survival. This isn't a perfect illustration, but the theme of The Camp of The Saints is akin to this illustration. Further, there are no white Third World countries, so all of them are people of 'color'. This is just a fact. Now, as to why there are no white Third World countries, that is another issue. But, facts are facts. White men did not orchestrate the racial distribution and migratory patterns of humanity throughout history. The basic question is whether or not the people of developed countries will allow the much more numerous people of the undeveloped countries to swamp them, much like the illustration depicted. Bottom line, it is a matter of survival

Impossible.

On a rare occasion we get to read something that discusses people, facts and events that it would have been impossible for the author to know would ever exist or would ever take place. This is such a novel. Not sci-fi, not a prediction of the future like 1984, just a truly frightening look at .the world and its inhabitants.

I am not yet finished with the novel but every single day I am amazed at reading a new insight as to what is going on in 2015, not 1972 when the book was written. I never do spoilers but I think a certain anchorman news reporter (in the book) will remind you of the pomposity and hypocrisy of many in the news media today.

The first half of the book is sometimes difficult reading as the author's style (and the translation from French) is not the smoothest. However, the many nuggets you find make it worthwhile.

I recommend this book to all who are willing to think about and truly care about our civilization. Raspail belongs in the antheon of important novelists, well above much of the fluff admired today.

FOLLOW UP: Again I use the word impossible. How could anyone in 1972 anticipate that we would have a Pope Benedict XVI and that we would have a Pope from South America in the middle of a refugee invasion.

Released in America 40 years ago, The Camp of the Saints has proven more prophetic with each passing day. Thankfully, the author does not limit his tale only to his native France or Europe but includes the rest of the world as well, as mutual casualties. His insights into America are brief but searing: "Faced with the example of urban America, fallen little by little into total decay, certain observers had seen the confrontation as a sign of the inevitable, though they took care not to say so in print. That was not the kind of thing one wrote those days..."
To condense a worldwide migration that has lasted over a century into a single novel required an outrageous plot peopled by outrageous (but truly memorable) characters, Raspail's is an armada of freighters and other vessels commandeered by 1 million of India's poor who then set sail for destination unknown and are feared by leaders worldwide. Part of his dark humor is letting the reader attach real names to his fictional ones. And there are many: idealists from the international secular and religious organizations and the minions of the wealthy and entertainment world, each competing to outdo the others as they try to aid the floating refugees, and realists who brace for the inevitable. Motives are mixed and truth an inconvenience easily disposed of: "In international bodies formed to deal with Third World problems, careers don't get built on the truth..."
Raspail strips away the outer actions and reveals what motivates his characters: "Spontaneous though they may seem, mass movements seldom occur without a certain degree of manipulation..." and "Dio possessed a belligerent intellect that thrived on springs of racial hatred barely below the surface, and far more intense than anyone imagined."
Perhaps his indictment of those who profess to report the news without bias is most prophetic: "Real-world drama, served in the comfort of home by that whore called Mass Media, only stirs up the void where Western opinion has long been submerged." When the author wrote those words in the 1970s, the media had not yet degenerated into what it is today: a public relations outlet for those it puts into and keeps in power.
Not surprisingly, from the book's first printing in French, Jean Raspail has been tarred and feathered with the usual "ist" words:"racist, fascist, capitalist, and extremist." But as the current flotillas fleeing Africa for Europe despite the threat of drowning in the Mediterranean have increased, the "ist" phrase that best describes his critics may prove to be "ceased to exist."

Kenneth Ellman Reviews The Camp of the Saints, Box 18, Newton, New Jersey 07860. Email:[email protected], Oct 25, 2016 . Racism is Irrational but Cultural Suicide is a Death Wish for our Children and Grandchildren.

“... the incredible fleet from the other side of the globe, the rusty, creaking fleet that the old Professor had been eying since morning. The stench had faded away at last, the terrible stench of latrines, that had heralded the fleet’s arrival, like thunder before a storm”.
And so the tale created by Jean Raspail in 1973 titled “The Camp of the Saints” begins.

The book in and of itself is not so extraordinary as a fictional account, although well written and demanding of attention through its recreation of a reality some never thought would happen. It is the reality today that makes this book so compelling, as it stands between news reports we read, see and hear and a prophecy we try to see through the mist and clouds of the future. While I read this book many years ago, it is the current events that cause me to now write this review. What makes the book grapple with your mind is it’s picture of what we see unfolding before our eyes today. More and more of this fiction comes into our lives and becomes reality, both for those who come fleeing to our world of Western Civilization and us who live there fearing it will disappear.

While the book is set in racial geographic tones as an invasion masquerading as migration, it conveys a very real biological reality that the conduct, culture and well being of our fellow human beings varies as much or perhaps more than it remains the same around our globe. Yes, our bodies and genetics are mostly the same, but our experiences and way of life are certainly not. Values and expectations may be significantly impacted by the world we face and grew up in. The fear that haunts this book is not the obvious racial difference between those of Caucasian biology and those of other genetic heritage. It is self evident that human beings must be judged individually as to what they are and are not. Those who presume that skin, eye and other facial features define the ability, values and capacity of an individual are blind to the truth of the world we live in and our human history. The fact that such blindness has been a part of human development since the beginning of humanity, does not it any way lesson the truth that we have learned each man must be judged according to what he is in all respects and what he has made of himself as an individual. This principle is beyond question if we are to make rational judgments about each other. Any standard other than measurement of individual accomplishment and judgment fails when applied for any purpose in daily life.

Equally so, as the Raspail book so clearly portrays, is the extraordinary cultural difference between many peoples and that the only way to maintain a Culture and Civilization that you value and want is to defend it against the opposing human conflicts for domination and control of our world. This Raspail book, using fiction, hallmarks a stark confrontation and truth that no human civilization can survive unless it chooses, defends and values itself . People kill, torture, enslave and destroy each other with regularity. In the long view of human history war and competition for resources defines a part of the human experience and such battles and killing is what, in part, has brought us to what we are today, for better or worse.

Raspail’s fiction becomes a stark choice between giving up the Culture and Beliefs of what your ancestors so sacrificed for us to have today or accepting a deceiving dream that we are all the same when Culturally we most certainly are not. It is better to live than die and accepting the reality of the biology of this world in a necessity to survive in it.
If you have not yet read this book, do it and see a glimmer of warning in the biology of what we are and must accept. While some in Europe and the United States may not kill unarmed invaders and so die themselves, I have no doubt that the Chinese and Russians, if after failing to stop such an invasion by non-lethal means, would take the next step to protect themselves and their families An interesting dichotomy and a terrible choice.
Kenneth Ellman, Box 18, Newton, New Jersey 07860. Email:[email protected]

Prescient
This received rave reviews from what was then a prestigious journal The Atlantic, of course times have changes and the Atlantics fallen and no one would dare admit the truth of this book> but he fact remains it describes exactly what has happened in the almost 50 years since it was written

If any intelligent person were to ask me to recommend two novels written in my lifetime (1943 on to now), I would without hesitation suggest Orwell's 1984 and this book by Raspail. Orwell was right. Raspail was right. If you don't believe Raspail, come to Miami, where I live. The number of Latin American and West Indian immigrants living in Miami in 1943 was less than 1 per cent. Today the number is 90 per cent. I was lucky to have chosen Spanish to study when I was 12, because that is now the dominant language here. The whole city has been turned into one vast slum in which not one word of English is spoken. This is not a rant, it is a simple statement of facts. Yes, I know, only a "racist" would mention such facts even if they are true. And that is ultimately Raspail's point, that everyone who objects to a relatively sudden tidal wave of immigrants is silenced by the accusation of "racism." I have lived this novel, I have seen it with my own eyes and heard it with my own ears.