Dominique Lapierre

On the night of 2 December 1984 a Union Carbide plant at Bhopal released methyl isocyanate over the sleeping city and thousands died within hours. Five Past Midnight in Bhopal, which Lapierre wrote with the Spanish author Javier Moro and published in 2001, reconstructs the years leading to that night from the side of the plant workers and the families in the settlements against its fence. Lapierre reported for Paris Match before he wrote books, and he spent two decades working with Larry Collins on Is Paris Burning? and Freedom at Midnight. City of Joy, his 1985 account of a Kolkata slum, made his name, and he gave half its earnings to clinics and schools in that city. Earnings from the Bhopal book went to the Sambhavna clinic, which treats survivors. He died on 4 December 2022, aged ninety-one, holding India's Padma Bhushan.