John Ralston Saul is an award-winning essayist and novelist. His works of ideas, history and philosophy are constantly being reissued and translated for a broad readership, as well as taught around the world. A long-time champion of freedom of expression, he was the elected President of PEN International from 2009 to 2015. He is a leading voice in the international movement supporting immigrants and refugees. 

 

Saul has had a growing impact on political and economic thought in many countries, particularly among young people confronting what they feel is a stagnant yet walled-off society. Declared a “prophet” by TIME magazine, his 14 works have been translated into 28 languages in 37 countries. 

 

Saul is perhaps best known for his philosophical trilogy – Voltaire’s Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West, The Doubter’s Companion: A Dictionary of Aggressive Common Sense and The Unconscious Civilization. This was followed by a meditation on the trilogy – On Equilibrium: Six Qualities of the New Humanism. 

 

In 2005 in The Collapse of Globalism and the Reinvention of the World, John Ralston Saul warned that, like it or not, globalism was already collapsing. If we did not act quickly, we would be caught in a crisis and limited to desperate reactions. The Collapse of Globalism has continued to spread around the world, published most recently in Greece, Turkey and for a third time in an updated and expanded form in Britain. 

 

In his 2008 bestseller, A Fair Country: Telling Truths about Canada, Saul argues that Canada has been heavily influenced and shaped by Indigenous ideas, including an original approach to egalitarianism, a taste for social complexity, a constant balancing of individualism and groups, a penchant for negotiation over violence, and a focus on inclusion which has encouraged positive attitudes towards immigration. A Fair Country is part of an argument which began with Reflections of a Siamese Twin and was brought to a conclusion in his most recent book The Comeback (2015). 

 

Saul is the Co-Founder of the Institute for Canadian Citizenship (ICC) and the LaFontaine-Baldwin Lecture (LBL). The ICC is a national organization promoting the inclusion of new citizens. Canoo is at the centre of the ICC’s efforts to unlock Canada for newcomers and make them feel wanted, respected and at home. Canoo’s 2000+ partners grant newcomers exclusive discounts to museums, national parks and other cultural experiences. The ICC organizes Enhanced Citizenship Ceremonies and produces cutting edge research on citizenship and immigration in Canada.

Saul was elected to two three-year terms as President of PEN International (2009-2015), the only worldwide organization of writers and journalists. PEN is a leading force for freedom of expression, getting writers out of prison and working against the growing tendency to kill journalists. 

 

Saul is widely considered to have led PEN International into a new era of international activism, from negotiating with dictators around the world, to speaking out for endangered languages. When Saul stepped down as President, Leonard Cohen thanked him in a written tribute for his “personal courage in hostile territory; for patience and skill in the face of the world’s relentless indifference to cruelty; for being all that a man can be in these times, and more.” 

 

He has published six novels. The Birds of Prey, his first published book, sold several million copies around the world. It was followed by The Field Trilogy, which deals with the crisis of modern power and its clash with the individual. It includes Baraka or The Lives, Fortunes and Sacred Honor of Anthony Smith, The Next Best Thing, and The Paradise Eater. His most recent work of fiction is Dark Diversions, a picaresque novel in which he observes the life of modern nouveaux riches Americans. 

 

He is General Editor of the Penguin Extraordinary Canadians project, a series of 18 biographies that reinterprets important Canadian figures for a contemporary audience by pairing well-known Canadian writers with significant historical, political and artistic figures from 1848 onwards. His biography of Louis-Hippolyte LaFontaine and Robert Baldwin – the leaders of the democratic movement which came to power in 1848 – is his own contribution to this series. 

 

He has received many national and international awards for his writing, including: Chile’s Pablo Neruda Medal, South Korea’s Manhae Grand Prize for Literature and The Gutenberg Galaxy Award for Literature. The Unconscious Civilization won Canada’s Governor General’s Literary Award for Non-Fiction. His Reflections of a Siamese Twin was chosen by Maclean’s magazine as one of the ten best non-fiction books of the twentieth century. His novel, The Paradise Eater, won Italy’s Premio Lettarario Internazionale. 

 

He is the Founder and Honorary Chair of Le Français pour l’avenir/French for the Future, an organization that works to expand English-French bilingualism among secondary school students, sits on the International Advisory Board for the Common Action Forum, and is an Honorary Member of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada (RAIC). He has supported the RAIC’s work on the on-going redevelopment of Parliament Hill, serving as an Honorary Advisor to the Block 2 Architectural Design Competition.

 

Born in Ottawa, Saul studied at McGill University and King’s College, University of London, where he obtained his Ph.D. in 1972. He is a Companion of the Order of Canada, the Order of Ontario, a Chevalier in the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of France and a member of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. He holds 22 honorary degrees from universities around the world.