The 2011 preface to the prescient novel "The Camp of the Saints" describes how the idea came to author Jean Raspail in 1972. The dystopian fiction was published in 1973. The book describes the destruction of Western civilization as France is overwhelmed with millions upon millions of illegal migrants, no-go zones, insurrectionists and criminals from the Middle East, Africa and India.

Raspail was staying at a Mediterranean villa with an ocean view.

"From the library where I was working, all you saw for 180 degrees was the endless expanse of the Mediterranean Sea, such that one morning, my gaze lost in the distance, I said to myself, “What if they came?” I didn’t know who these they were, but to me, it seemed bound to happen that the inevitable poor from the south, in the manner of a tidal wave, were one day going to set out for this opulent shore, the open border of our blessed lands. That’s how it all got started."