The French Ayn Rand, revived:
The Return of MAGA’s Favorite Forbidden Book
What an apocalyptic French novel about a migrant invasion reveals about the worldview of nationalist conservatives
By Idrees Kahloon
Illustration by Matteo Giuseppe Pani / The Atlantic
December 11, 2025, 8 AM ET
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Not long ago, a book party like this would have been unthinkable: a Washington celebration of one of the most notorious French novels ever written. But on a frigid December night, some 50 people crammed into Butterworth’s, a Capitol Hill restaurant favored by the MAGA elite, to celebrate the rerelease of The Camp of the Saints, which had gone out of print in English decades ago. The dystopian novel by the French author Jean Raspail depicts the destruction of European civilization by barbaric migrant hordes that arrive, uninvited, by boat. It has been mostly reviled since its publication, in 1973. But prominent figures of the French right have hailed it as prophetic, including Marine Le Pen, who first read it at 18 and keeps a signed..
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