The Camp of The Saints - Response

Response

In 1975 Time Magazine panned the novel as a "bilious tirade" that only required a response because it "arrives trailing clouds of praise from French savants, including Dramatist Jean Anouilh ('A haunting book of irresistible force and calm logic'), with the imprint of a respected U.S. publisher and a teasing pre-publication ad campaign ('The end of the white world is near')". The December 1994 cover story of The Atlantic Monthly focused on the themes of the novel, analyzing them in the context of international relations.(This was at about the same time that The Social Contract Press chose to bring it back into U.S. publication.)

In 2002 Lionel Shriver described the novel as "both prescient and appalling," certainly "racist" but "written with tremendous verbal energy and passion." Shriver writes that the book "gives bilious voice to an emotion whose expression is increasingly taboo in the West, but that can grow only more virulent when suppressed: the fierce resentment felt by majority populations when that status seems threatened."

William F. Buckley, Jr. praised the book in 2004 as "a great novel" (though incorrectly stating that the refugees are from Africa) which raised questions on how to respond to massive illegal immigration. In 2005 the conservative Chilton Williamson praised the book as "one of the most uncompromising works of literary reaction in the 20th century." In 2001 the liberal Southern Poverty Law Center reported that the novel had been published five times in the US and was "widely revered by American white supremacists and is a sort of anti-immigration analog to The Turner Diaries."

The book returned to the bestseller list in 2011.