“We made a writer out of a criminal,” criticizes Kamel Daoud

The Algiers Court of Appeal must rule on Wednesday on the request for the release of Boualem Sansal. The 80-year-old writer was placed under arrest for “attacks on state security”.

“We have made a writer a criminal and we lower our eyes in front of real criminals”, castigates writer Kamel Daoud on Wednesday, December 11 on France Inter, while the indictment chamber of the Algiers Court of Appeal must rule during the day on the request for the release of Boualem Sansal. The Franco-Algerian writer has been incarcerated in Algeria since mid-November for endangering state security, which Kamel Daoud denounces. The Franco-Algerian writer considers that “the crime” on the contrary “is not being able to talk about the civil war.”

The detention of Boualem Sansal has caused great excitement internationally, and particularly in France. A press conference will be held during the day by the publisher Gallimard. Kamel Daoud will be present during this mobilization, but he fears that it will not be able to “make things happen”. “This regime is not sensitive to international mobilization because it has built its survival equation on the fact that the whole world is angry with it and that there is an international conspiracy,” he maintains. Kamel Daoud in fact accuses the Algerian regime of being “weak, resentful and violent”.

If he admits to being “pessimistic”the winner of the Goncourt 2024 prize still hopes that this will make it possible not to “not make Boualem Sansal fall into oblivion”. “If we forget in France the price of freedom, we will lose it”warns Kamel Daoud, who wonders why we “judge writers for crimes committed by terrorists”.

Kamel Daoud also discusses his more personal case and the attacks he has been subject to since the publication of his novel Houris. The writer confides feeling “anger, a feeling of humiliation, sadness” also mixed with its “joy and pride of having had the Goncourt”. He wonders what concrete criticism is against writers like him or Boualem Sansal. “To defend women and freedom? I accept it. To denounce Islamism and authoritarianism? I assume it”he retorts.