The Day of the Jackal
1971 novel by Frederick Forsyth
The Day of the Jackal is a 1971 political thriller novel by English author Frederick Forsyth about a professional assassin who is contracted by the OAS, a French dissident paramilitary organisation, to kill Charles de Gaulle, the president of France.
The novel received admiring reviews and praise when first published in 1971, and it received a 1972 Best Novel Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America. The novel remains popular, and in 2003 it was listed on the BBC's survey The Big Read.
The novel begins as historical fiction; the OAS did exist and conspired to commit the act with which the book opens, giving an accurate depiction of the attempt to assassinate General de Gaulle by Jean-Marie Bastien-Thiry on 22 August 1962. The subsequent plot is fiction.
Plot
Part One: Anatomy of a Plot
In 1962, after the failed assassination attempt on Charles de Gaulle, Lieutenant-Colonel Jean-Marie Bastien-Thiry and other OAS conspirators were arrested in Petit-Clamart by authorities after the Évian Accords granted Algeria independence. The SDECE infiltrated the OAS, seizing and interrogating Antoine Argoud, the operation commander. The failure of the Petit-Clamart attempt, a betrayal of a subsequent plot at the École Militaire, and Bastien-Thiry's execution marked a significant crackdown.
Argoud's deputy Lt-Col Marc Rodin believed success in killing de Gaulle required hiring an unknown mercenary outside the organization. He contacted a British hitman in Vienna, who agreed to kill de Gaulle for US$500,000, half upfront and half after.
“The Day of the Jackal” enters the record as 1971 novel by Frederick Forsyth. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Jackal, novel and Frederick can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“The Day of the Jackal” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Jackal, novel and Frederick provides the most credible route into that argument.
Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 5, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q26085. VIAF identifies the subject as 181415954. The Library of Congress control number is no2025041512. None of the 3 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1971, 1972, 2003 and 1962.
Later fame can flatten the distinction between original context, subsequent adaptation and institutional collecting history. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “The Day of the Jackal” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.