The Day of the Jackal is a 1971 political thriller novel by English author Frederick Forsyth about a professional assassin who is contracted by the OAS, a French dissident paramilitary organisation, to kill Charles de Gaulle, the president of France.
The novel received admiring reviews and praise when first published in 1971, and it received a 1972 Best Novel Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America. The novel remains popular, and in 2003 it was listed on the BBC's survey The Big Read.
The novel begins as historical fiction; the OAS did exist and conspired to commit the act, with which the book opens, giving an accurate depiction of the attempt to assassinate General de Gaulle by Jean-Marie Bastien-Thiry on 22 August 1962. The subsequent plot is fiction.
