Frederick Forsyth is an English author, political commentator and former journalist and spy. He is famous for his novels; The Day of the Jackal, The Odessa File, The Fist of God, Icon, The Fourth Protocol, The Afghan, The Dogs of War, The Devil's Alternative, The Veteran, Avenger, The Cobra and The Kill List. Forsyth's works regularly feature on best-sellers lists. Several of his books have been made into films. He has sold approximately 70 million books. The Day of the Jackal is a thriller novel about a professional assassin who is contracted by the OAS, a French dissident paramilitary organisation, to kill Charles de Gaulle, the President of France. France invaded Algeria in 1830. Very quickly it became not a colony, as in the British model of Empire, but an actual administrative department of France, fully integrated into the patrie. After World War Two there were growing calls for independence and low-level violence escalated into a full-blown war of independence which started in 1954, led by the main independence movement, the National Liberation Front or FLN. The novel opens with a detailed account of one of these plots, the assassination attempt mounted by Jean-Marie Bastien-Thiry in the Paris suburb of Le Petit-Clamart on 22 August 1962. The plot failed, Thiry and his co-conspirators were caught, and Thiry was executed by firing squad on 11 March 1963. You can listen online to free English audiobook “The Day of the Jackal” by Frederick Forsyth on our website.
