City of Joy author Lapierre, 91, dies

Donated royalties for humanitarian projects in India

Marseille, Dec. 5: French writer Dominique Lapierre, the author of best-selling books on India like “Freedom at Midnight” and “City of Joy” and whose novels sold tens of millions of copies, has died.

“At 91, he died of old age,” his wife Dominique Conchon-Lapierre told the French newspaper VarMatin on Sunday. She added that she is “at peace and serene since Dominique is no longer suffering”.

Born on July 30, 1931, in Chatelaillon, Lapierre has sold about 50 million copies of the six books he wrote with the American writer Larry Collins — the most famous being “Is Paris Burning?” The nonfiction book published in 1965 chronicled the events leading up to August 1944, when Nazi Germany surrendered control of the French capital, and was adapted for the silver screen by Francis Ford Coppola and Gore Vidal.

His “City of Joy” (1985) — about the hardships of a rickshaw puller in Kolkata — was also a massive success. A movie based on it was released in 1992, starring Patrick Swayze and directed by Roland Joffe. Lapierre donated the bulk of his royalties from “City of Joy” to support humanitarian projects in India.

When he visited Mother Teresa in Kolkata in the early 1980s, he presented her with $50,000, admitting it was “only a drop in the ocean of need”. The Albanian nun replied: “If this drop did not exist, even the ocean would not”.

In 2005, he said that thanks to his funding of humanitarian work, as well as donations from readers, it became “possible to cure a million tuberculosis patients in 24 years (and) to care for 9,000 children with leprosy”.