Who Will Remember the People...
1986 novel by Jean Raspail
Who Will Remember the People... (French: Qui se souvient des hommes...) is a 1986 novel by the French writer Jean Raspail. It tells the history of the Alacalufe people, a largely extinct South American tribe, throughout the centuries. The two main characters reappear in each generation. The native name of the Alacufs is "Kaweskar", which means "the people". Raspail had met members of the tribe in the early 1950s which had made an impression that stayed with him.
The book was published in English in 1988, translated by Jeremy Leggatt. It received the Chateaubriand Prize and the Inter Book Prize.
Reception
Elizabeth Marshall Thomas reviewed the book for The New York Times, and wrote that Raspail "seems rather critical of the Kaweskar, calling them seafarers who 'never even invented the sail,' having them perform unlikely, pointless acts (impotently throwing a stone in imitation of a cannonball, for example) and describing their food from a European viewpoint, which certainly makes it seem disgusting." Marshall Thomas was positive about the author's negative portrayal of Europeans, especially that of Charles Darwin: "Mr. Raspail's portrait of him deserves applause".
The public source identifies “Who Will Remember the People...” as 1986 novel by Jean Raspail. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Will, Remember and People.
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Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3414418. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1986 and 1988.
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This entry incorporates text from “Who Will Remember the People...” 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.