‘City of Joy’ bestselling author Dominique Lapierre died today at the age of 91. Great signature of the newspaper “Paris Match”, his disappearance was confirmed by Mondadori, which dealt with the distribution of his books in Italy. He was born in Châtelaillon, La Rochelle, in 1931. The novel set in a Calcutta shanty town made him famous to the general public. The book received the Truth Prize from the city of Le Cannet in 1986. In 1982, with the support of Mother Teresa of Calcutta, he founded the association “Action pour les enfants des lépreux de Calcutta”, to which he donated half of the his copyrights: he deals with centers for the fight against leprosy and tuberculosis.
On 6 May 2008, the Indian government awarded him the Padma Bhushan medal for his actions in favor of the poorest in the country. Among his successes also “Greater than love”, “Paris burns?” and “Five past midnight in Bhopal”. On behalf of the newspaper he traveled extensively in the Soviet Union and then in India. Also dedicated to the Asian country is “Midnight and five in Bhopal”, which reconstructs one of the greatest dramas in the history of India, the tragedy of the locality where the explosion of the Union Carbide factory in 1984 caused thousands of deaths and injuries, due to the emission of harmful gases. In his life, the passion for literature has become part of the family: his daughter, Alexandra Lapierre, is also a well-known writer, who became famous above all for her historical novels.
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