Dominique Lapierre
Dominique Lapierre (born 1931 in Châtelaillon, near La Rochelle, France) is a French author.
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Lapierre was born in La Rochelle, France, and graduated from Lafayette College, Pennsylvania. He spent 14 years as an international reporter with the news magazine Paris Match.
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' 2005 death.
Since 1982, Lapierre has shared his royalties with the non-profit City of Joy Foundation, which provides aid to slum children in Calcutta and West Bengal. 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. Dominique Lapierre speaks fluent Bengali. He was awarded the Padma Bhushan, India's third highest civilian award in the 2008 Republic Day honours list.
His wife Dominique Conchon-Lapierre (they were married in 1980) is his partner in the City of Joy Foundation (registered in France under the official name of Action pour les enfants des lépreux de Calcutta), which is a purely volunteer-driven association. The couple lives in the south of France.
They have one daughter, Alexandra, who also is a writer.
- '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
- The City of Joy ("La Cité de la joie", 1985), ISBN 0-385-18952-4
- Beyond Love ("Plus grands que l'amour", 1990), ISBN 0-446-51438-1
- A Thousand Suns ("Mille soleils", 1999), ISBN 0-446-52535-9
- Once Upon a Time in the USSR ("Il était une fois l'URSS", forthcoming 2006)
- Five Past Midnight in Bhopal ("Il était minuit cinq à Bhopal", 2001), ISBN 0-446-53088-3
