1 Trending: Socialists Now Run Or Are Fighting To Run Four Of America’s Biggest Cities

2 Trending: D.C. Appeals Court Greenlights Trump’s Expedited Deportations

3 Trending: Graham Platner And Planned Parenthood Bond Over A Shared Hatred Of Women

4 Trending: SCOTUS Upholds Border Officials’ Ability To Parole Green Card Holders Who ‘Committed’ Crimes

They Banned This Book To Keep You From Talking About Immigration

Jean Raspail’s ‘Camp of the Saints’ is not a great book, but a necessary one to understand the current moment.

Share Article on Facebook

Share Article on Twitter

Share Article on Truth Social

Share Article via Email

These days, many books like to boast of being “banned,” though it’s hard to take this seriously when many such books are prominently featured at bookstores and regularly assigned in English classes. In truth, the only real banned book of note — that is, a book that is consciously ignored, deliberately kept out of print, not allowed in libraries, and impossible to find in any bookstore — has been The Camp of the Saints by Jean Raspail, a French novel originally published in 1973 dealing with the issue of mass migration from the Third World. Despite the ongoing relevance of its subject matter — particularly given the rape gang inquiry in the U.K. and other immigration controversies across Europe — educators, publishers, and cultural gatekeepers, both in France and elsewhere, have deemed it too subversive for the public to read.

Thankfully, a few prominent voices on the Right, including conservative podcaster Matt Walsh, have revived interest in The Camp of the Saints. Although the book was out of print for decades, the publisher Vauban Books recently reprinted a new English translation of the book by Ethan Rundell. Soon after interest in the book surged after Matt Walsh’s endorsement, its listing on Amazon mysteriously disappeared earlier this year. After being called out by Walsh in turn, the listing is back up, yet no one has apologized or explained why it went down in the first place.

To be fair, some of the outrage over this book is merited. The Camp of the Saints really is an offensive book that challenges the status quo, handles controversy with bluntness and aggression, intentionally disgusts the reader on countless occasions, and induces profound doubts and despair about the world. In his introductory essay to the book, “Big Other,” Raspail proudly admits, “It is an impetuous, fierce, bracing book, almost joyful in its distress, but savage, sometimes brutal, and repellant to those pure souls........

© The Federalist