City of Joy and Freedom at Midnight author Dominique Lapierre has died at the age of 91.
A French author with a passion for India, Lapierre’s novels sold tens of millions of copies.
“At 91, he died of old age,” his wife Dominique Conchon-Lapierre told the French newspaper Var-Matin on Sunday. She added, “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 in collaboration with the American writer Larry Collins — the most famous being Is Paris Burning?
Lapierre donated bulk of his royalties from City of Joy for humanitarian projects in India.
Is Paris Burning? is a non-fiction 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 1985 novel City of Joy — 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.
A poster of the 1992 film ‘City of Joy’ that was based on Lapierre’s novel