Dominique Lapierre (born
1931 in Châtelaillon
, Charente-Maritime, France
) is a
French author.
Life
Dominique
Lapierre was born in Châtelaillon-Plage, Charente-Maritime, France. At
the age of thirteen, he traveled to America with his father who was
a diplomat (Consul General of France). He attended the Jesuit
school in New Orleans and became a paper boy for the
New
Orleans Item. He developed interests in traveling, writing and
cars.
Lapierre renovated a 1927 Nash that his mother gave him and decided
to travel across America during his summer holidays. To earn his
way he painted mail boxes. Later, he received a scholarship to
study the Aztec civilization in Mexico. He hitchhiked throughout
America living an adventurous existence, wrote articles, washed
windows in churches, gave lectures, and even found a job as a siren
cleaner on a boat returning to Europe. One day a truck driver who
picked him up on the road to Chicago stole his suitcase. He found
the driver before the police did. The Chicago Tribune paid him $100
for his exclusive story. His twenty thousand miles of adventure
beginning with just thirty dollars in his pocket led to his first
book ‘
A Dollar for a Thousand Kilometers’. It became one
of the best sellers of postwar France and other European
countries.
Early Works
When Lapierre was eighteen, he received a Fulbright scholarship to
study economics at Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania. He
bought a 1937 Chrysler convertible for $30 and fell in love with a
fashion editor. They were married in New York City Hall on his 21st
birthday and drove to Mexico in the old Chrysler for their
honeymoon. With only $300 in their pockets, they had just enough to
buy gas, sandwiches, and cheap rooms in truckers’ motels. In Los
Angeles, they won another $300 in a radio game show for Campbell
soups. The prize included a case of soups, which was their only
food for three weeks. Lapierre sold the Chrysler for $400 in San
Francisco and bought two tickets on the SS Presidential Cleveland
for Japan. The honeymoon lasted for a year. They worked their way
across Japan, Hong Kong, Thailand, India, Pakistan, Iran, Turkey
and Lebanon. When they returned to France, Lapierre wrote his
second book, ‘
Honeymoon around the Earth’.
Collaboration with Larry Collins
On his return to Paris after his honeymoon, he was conscripted into
the French army. After one year in the tank regiment, he was
transferred to the shapes(?) headquarters to serve as an
interpreter. One day in the cafeteria he met a young American
corporal, Larry Collins, a Yale graduate and draftee. They became
friends instantly. When Collins was discharged he was offered a job
with Proctor and Gamble. Two days before reporting to the new job,
the United Press offered him a job as caption writer at their Paris
office, for much less money than offered by Proctor and Gamble.
Collins took the offer from United Press and was soon picked up by
Newsweek to be their correspondent in the Middle East. When
Lapierre was discharged, he found work as a reporter for the
magazine Paris Match. Collins became the godfather of the
Lapierre’s first child, Alexandra. On several occasions, Collins
and Lapierre met while on assignment. In spite of their friendship
they had to compete with each other for stories. But they decided
to join forces to tell a big story which would appeal to both
French and anglophone audiences. Their first bestseller
Is
Paris burning? sold close to ten million copies in thirty
languages. In this book they mixed the modern technique of
investigation journalism with the classical methods of historical
research.
After that they spent four years in Jerusalem to reconstruct the
birth of the state of Israel for the book
O Jerusalem.
Lapierre is proud that after spending a great deal in Jerusalem he
knows each alley, square, street, and building in the Holy City
intimately.
Two of Lapierre's books -
Is Paris
Burning? (co-written with
Larry Collins) and
City of Joy - have been made into films.
Lapierre and Collins wrote several other books together, the last
being
Is New York
Burning? (2005), before Collins' death in 2005.
Dominique Lapierre speaks fluent
Bengali.
City of Joy foundation and other humanitarian causes
The City of Joy is about the unsung heroes of the Pilkhana slum in
Kolkota. Lapierre donated half the royalties he earned from this
book to support several humanitarian projects in Kolkota, including
refuge centers for leper and polio children, dispensaries, schools,
rehabilitation workshops, education programs, sanitary actions, and
hospital boats. To process and channel the charitable funds he
founded an association called "Action aid for Calcutta lepers'
children" (registered in France under the official name of
Action pour les enfants des lépreux de Calcutta). Aware of
the corruption in India, he organizes all his fund transfers to
India in such a way as to ensure that the money reaches the right
person for the right purpose. His wife since 1980, Dominique
Conchon-Lapierre is his partner in the City of Joy
Foundation.
The
royalties from Five
Past Midnight in Bhopal go to the Sambhavna clinic in
Bhopal which provides free medical treatment to the victims of the
1984 Union Carbide Bhopal disaster
. Lapierre also funds a primary school in
Oriya Basti, one of the settlements described in
Five Past
Midnight in Bhopal.
Passion for cars and travelling
At the age of six, he developed a passion for automobiles. Each
summer, while at his grandparents' Atlantic coast beach house, he
marvelled at the wonders of his uncle's American cars. When he was
a Fullbright exchange student at Lafayette College, he bought, for
thirty dollars, a convertible Chrysler Royal he found in a
junkyard. Forty-five years later, he saw a photograph of the same
Chrysler in a French vintage car magazine. The automobile was about
to be auctioned in Poitier. He rushed to the auction, made a bid,
and won it. When he was a student at the University of Paris, he
acquired an old Amil car,which he and a classmate drove all the way
to Ankara, Turkey. Later, in a Rolls Royce he bought on his
fortieth birthday, he drove from Bombay to Saint Tropez via
Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran and Turkey.
Awards
He was awarded the
Padma Bhushan,
India's third highest civilian award in the 2008 Republic Day
honours list.
Bibliography
With Larry Collins
- 'Is Paris Burning?'
—Adolf Hitler, August 25,
1944 ("Paris brûle-t-il?", 1965)
- Or I'll Dress You
in Mourning ("...Ou tu porteras mon deuil", 1968)
- O Jerusalem! (Ô Jérusalem,
1972), ISBN 0-671-21163-3
- Freedom at Midnight
("Cette nuit la liberté", 1975), ISBN 0-671-22088-8
- The Fifth Horseman
("Le Cinquième cavalier", 1980), ISBN 0-671-24316-0
- Is New York
Burning? ("New-York brûle-t-il?", 2005), ISBN
1-59777-520-7
Solo
With Javier Moro
See also
Wikis
Quiz
Facts
Map
Search
