On Friday, April 17th, the conservative publisher Vauban Books, which publishes the latest English edition of Jean Raspail’s seminal novel The Camp of the Saints, was informed that Amazon was removing the book from sale in the United States. The e-commerce giant is acting as a censor towards a leading author who has been recognised and established in the French and international literary landscape for decades.
The new translation of the 1973 novel, produced by the publisher, Ethan Rundell, has been available on Amazon since the summer of 2025 and has been a resounding success there. Since it went on sale, the publisher states, no fewer than 20,000 copies have been sold, with an average reader rating of 4.8.
Raspail’s book, now over fifty years old, has become a benchmark for its uncompromising portrayal of a Europe sinking under a tidal wave of migration that nothing seems able to stop. The book, which was initially shared only by a circle of happy few French conservatives, is now recognised as a major literary work—a dystopian novel that deciphers, with uncommon narrative and dramatic intensity, the material and moral collapse of our civilisation wallowing in resignation in the face of the arrival of ‘the other,’ adorned with every virtue.
Certain iconic quotes are now widely shared on social media—in French, but also in English. The book had been available in translation for several years already, but Rundell’s work has given it new visibility.
Amazon deemed the novel’s content to be “offensive.” Yet there is nothing shocking in these lines, written in a lively style that is at once tragic and epic. A shiver is bound to run down the spine of anyone who loses themselves in this work of speculative fiction—just as when reading the most poignant pages of Huxley or Orwell.
Let the reader rest assured. They can still purchase, for a few dollars and with priority delivery, Mao’s Little Red Book or even, in a different vein, the complete collection of Hitler’s speeches from 1922 to 1945. Far be it from us to take offence at this: after all, these are also historical documents whose study is highly instructive. But to censor Raspail?
Faced with the scale of the controversy, Amazon eventually, a few hours after Vauban Books’ announcement, made the novel available online again. As is often the case in such situations, the announcement of Amazon’s censorship gave sales a new boost. Within a few hours, the book was topping the sales charts in several categories. For a brief moment, Raspail even outstripped Hugo and Zola, Balzac and Proust, in the French literature category.
One has to be cautious for the future. Some readers note in the comments that they have placed massive orders for Raspail’s novel. How right they are! After all, he is the brilliant inventor of the Kingdom of Patagonia, the last refuge of a world in peril. The best you can do when the world is about to collapse is to read books.
