Born on 5 July 1925 in Chemillé-sur-Dême, Indre-et-Loire, Raspail was the son of factory manager Octave Raspail and Marguerite Chaix. He attended private Catholic school at Saint-Jean de Passy in Paris, the Institution Sainte-Marie d'Antony and the :fr:École des Roches|École des Roches in Verneuil-sur-Avre. During the first twenty years of his career Raspail traveled the world to discover populations threatened by their confrontation with modernity. He led a Tierra del Fuego–Alaska car trek in 1950–52 and, in 1954, a French research expedition to the land of the Incas. Raspail served as Consul General of the Kingdom of Araucanía and Patagonia. In 1981, his novel Moi, Antoine de Tounens, roi de Patagonie won the Grand Prix du Roman of the Académie française. His traditional Catholicism serves as an inspiration for many of his utopian works, in which the ideologies of communism and liberalism are shown to fail, and a Catholic monarchy is restored. In his 1990 novel Sire a French king is crowned in Reims in February 1999, the 18-year-old Philippe Pharamond de Bourbon, a direct descendant of the last French kings. In his best known work, The Camp of the Saints, Raspail predicts the collapse of Western civilization from an overwhelming "tidal wave" of Third Worldimmigration. The "hordes" of the world rise and, in the words of playwright Ian Allen, "destroy the white race." The book has been translated into English, German, Spanish, Italian, Afrikaans, Czech, Dutch, Polish, and Portuguese, and as of 2006 it had sold over 500,000 copies. After The Camp of the Saints Raspail wrote other novels, including North, Sire, and The Fisher's Ring. Raspail reiterated these views in a co-written 1985 article for Le Figaro magazine, where he asserted "the proportion of France's non-European immigrant population will grow to endanger the survival of traditional French culture, values and identity". Raspail was a candidate for the French Academy in 2000, for which he received the most votes yet did not obtain the majority required for election to the vacant seat of Jean Guitton. An article by Raspail for Le Figaro on 17 June 2004, entitled "The Fatherland Betrayed by the Republic", in which he criticized the French immigration policy, was sued by International League against Racism and Anti-Semitism on the grounds of "incitement to racial hatred", but the action was turned down by the court on 28 October. In 1970 the Académie française awarded Raspail its Jean Walter Prize for the whole of his work. In 2007 he was awarded the Grande Médaille d’Or des Explorations et Voyages de Découverte by the Société de géographie of France for the whole of his work.
Le Camp des Saints, translated as The Camp of the Saints by Norman Shapiro – novel
La Hache des Steppes
Journal Peau Rouge
Nuage Blanc et les Peaux-Rouges d'aujourd'hui – by Aliette and Jean Raspail
Le Jeu du Roi – novel
Boulevard Raspail – columns
Les Peaux-rouges aujourd'hui
Septentrion – novel
Bleu caraïbe et citrons verts : mes derniers voyages aux Antilles
Les Antilles, d'île en île
Moi, Antoine de Tounens, roi de Patagonie – novel
Les Hussards : histoires exemplaires
Les Yeux d'Irène – novel
Le Président – novel
Qui se souvient des hommes..., translated as Who Will Remember the People...: A Novel. Translated by J. Leggatt – novel. UK paperback published under alternative titleThe People.
L'Île bleue, translated by J. Leggatt as Blue Island: A Novel
Pêcheurs de Lune
Sire – novel
Vive Venise – by Aliette and Jean Raspail
Sept cavaliers quittèrent la ville au crépuscule par la porte de l'Ouest qui n'était plus gardée – novel
