Saul, John Ralston, 1947- : John Ralston Saul, author and essayist, has written widely for a Canadian and international audience, with works ranging from fiction to non-fiction philosophy and history. Saul was born in 1947 and educated at McGill University and King's College at the University of London, where he received his PhD in 1972 for his thesis on the modernization of France under Charles de Gaulle. He is the spouse of former Governor-General Adrienne Clarkson.
After working in Paris for a few years in property management, Saul became Special Assistant to Maurice Strong, the Chair of Petro-Canada, during its creation from 1976 to 1978. During this period, his first novel, The Birds of Prey / Mort d'un Général, was published in French and English. An international bestseller in 1977, it was followed by the "Field Trilogy", including Baraka in 1983, The Next Best Thing / L'Ennemi du Bien in 1986, and The Paradise Eater / Paradis Blues in 1988. The Paradise Eater won the Italian Premio Letterario Internazionale in 1990. His novel, De si bons Américains was published in French in 1994, but did not appear in English until 2012, as Dark Diversions. His books of public philosophy established his reputation as an intellectual: Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West (1992), The Doubter's Companion: A Dictionary of Aggressive Common Sense (1994), and The Unconscious Civilization (1996). The latter book arose from the 1995 Massey Lectures and won the 1996 Governor-General's Award for Non-Fiction Literature and the Gordon Montador Award for Best Canadian Book on Social Issues. His subsequent essays included Reflections of a Siamese Twin (1997), On Equilibrium (2001), and The Collapse of Globalism and the Reinvention of the World (2005). He edited the Penguin "Extraordinary Canadians" project, a series of 18 biographies pairing well-known Canadian authors with notable Canadian subjects. He contributed his own joint biography of Louis-Hippolyte LaFontaine and Robert Baldwin (2010) to the series. His other recent works, A Fair Country: Telling Truths about Canada (2008) and The Comeback (2014), have reinterpreted the position of Aboriginal peoples in contemporary Canada and Canadian history.
Saul's writing and ideas engaged him increasingly in political activism from the 1980s, particularly in the free trade debate. He joined the executive of PEN Canada in 1987 and served as president from 1990 to 1992. His position paper, "Culture and Foreign Policy" (1994), written for the parliamentary review of foreign policy, was influential in advancing the concept of culture as the "third pillar" of foreign policy (along with the traditional pillars of security and trade). With the appointment of Adrienne Clarkson as Governor-General of Canada in 1999, Saul became viceregal consort. On completion of her term in Rideau Hall, they created the Institute for Canadian Citizenship, a national organization to support the inclusion of new citizens, and founded the Lafontaine-Baldwin Symposium to promote issues of citizenship and the public good. Long a champion of freedom of expression, Saul was elected President of PEN International in October 2009 and served in this capacity until October 2015.
Saul has been widely recognized for his writing and activism. He has received 19 honorary doctorates, was made a Chevalier in the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres de France in 1996, and a Companion of the Order of Canada in 1999. The Chilean government awarded him the International Pablo Neruda Medal of Honour in 2004, he received the South Korean Manhae Grand Prize for Literature in 2010, the inaugural Gutenberg Galaxy Award for Literature in 2011, and the World Prize of Humanism by the Ohrid Academy of Humanism in Macedonia in 2015.
