Eric Dervaux / Eric Dervaux / Hans Lucas via Re
The writer Boualem Sansal, here on June 1, 2024 in Nice, was arrested on November 16, 2024 at Algiers airport, coming from France, several French media reported.
ALGERIA – Gallimard, publisher of Boualem Sansal, expressed this Friday, November 22, its “deep concern” about the Franco-Algerian writer and called to his “immediate release” after his “arrest by Algerian security services”.
“The editions Gallimardeditor of the literary work of Boualem Sansal since the publication of Barbarian Oath twenty-five years ago, express their very deep concern following the arrest of the writer by the Algerian security services and call for the immediate release of the writer.indicates a press release.
The 75-year-old author, who obtained French nationality this year, was arrested on Saturday November 16 at the airport ofAlgiersfrom France, several French media reported on Thursday.
The reasons for his arrest are not known. According to the weekly Marianne, he does not give “no more news from his loved ones since his arrival in Algiers”.
According to The Worldthe Algerian authorities could have taken very badly the statements of Sansal to the media Frontières, reputed to be far-right, which take up the Moroccan position according to which Moroccan territory was truncated under French colonization for the benefit of Algeria. According to the daily, it would be a “ red line » for Algiers, which could result in the writer being accused of undermining national integrity.
Boualem Sansal and the “black decade”
Boualem Sansal is a fierce critic of Islamism and Algerian power, an attitude from which he has never abandoned. “His novels, his essays, his writings on peace and tolerance have brought to light the obscurantisms of all kinds which tragically affect the progress of the world, the conduct of peoples and the lives of individuals”wrote his editor.
“It is indeed his freedom and his temperament as a writer, attached to human, historical and scientific truths, that the Algerian regime sanctions today with the greatest arbitrariness”he continued.
The author achieved success from his debut in 1999 with “The Oath of the Barbarians”a novel which relates the rise to power of the fundamentalists who contributed to plunging Algeria into a civil war with an official death toll of 200,000. This text, published in full “black decade” (1992-2002), received the First French Novel Prize and the Tropiques Prize.
His work also includes “The German Village”censored in Algeria because it draws a parallel between Islamism and Nazism, for which he received in 2008, in France, the Grand Prix RTL, or “Darwin Street”which earned him the Arab Novel Prize in 2012, despite the opposition of Arab ambassadors in France, who finance this prize in partnership with the Arab World Institute.
In 2013, the French Academy awarded him the Grand Prix de la Francophonie. While this Friday, November 22, the writer and academician Jean-Christophe Rufin (Brazil Red, The Red Necklace) proposed to his colleagues a “ emergency vote » to elect Boualem Sansal to the French Academy.
“ His election will help demonstrate our solidarity and prevent the repression of which he is a victim from being buried in silence. France owes him that much “, he said in a message relayed on Instagram.
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