France did not colonize Morocco because “it’s a big state”. Or, “it’s easy to colonize small things that have no history, but colonizing a state is very difficult”. Do these statements explain the exit from the radar of the Franco-Algerian writer Boualem Sansal, who has not given any sign of life since his arrival at Algiers airport, from Paris, Saturday November 16?
The author of 2084, the end of the world (Gallimard), dystopia inspired by 1984, by George Orwell, who won him the grand prize for novels from the French Academy in 2015, held them in an interview with the far-right media Frontières (formerly Livre noir) on the occasion of the release of his latest book, The French, let’s talk about it! (Deer). This was broadcast on YouTube on Wednesday October 2, 2024.
An Algerian from the inside
Such an analysis can only sting the Algerian state, as it amounts to comparing it, implicitly, to its eternal Moroccan rival while establishing the superiority of the latter. “Reducing Algeria to “a little thing that has no history” and specifying that this is not the case for Morocco can only be seen here as an attack on the integrity of the Statedeciphers a source in Algiers. Multiple laws condemn this. »
This conclusion will not have escaped Boualem Sansal, 75 years old and one of the most famous French-speaking writers in Algeria. The writer with long gray hair knows the State from the inside out. An engineer graduated from the Polytechnic School of Algiers, he held a senior civil servant position at the Ministry of Industry when, in 2003, he was dismissed from his position.
In question, the freedom of tone and the independence of mind of this late author, who published his first book at the age of 50. In The Barbarian Oath (Gallimard, 1999), he dissected the causes of the black decade, these clashes between armed Islamists and the government which left 150,000 to 200,000 dead between 1992 and 2002, through a police investigation surrounding a murder.
Freedom of tone and independence of mind
It was the beginning of a resounding literary career for this resident of Boumerdès, a coastal town 50 km east of Algiers where, despite his editorial ties and his numerous stays in France, Boualem Sansal continues to live today. . Islamism, religious radicalism, relationship with the old metropolis, Algerian mismanagement, Arabic language… His stories, often tinged with humor and conducted in a classical language, sometimes rich in poetic accents, bear a resolutely political imprint. Enough to offend an Algerian regime jealous of its role as guarantor of collective history.
Distributed in his native country, the books of Boualem Sansal, who has become a public figure, fuel burning controversies there, fueled by often unrestrained speeches and symbolic gestures. In 2012, Boualem Sansal went to Israel, which Algeria does not recognize. It is the crossing of a red line, even a betrayal. A step that he began to outline in 2008 by publishing The German Villageon the exile of a former SS man in Algeria.
So much daring which, until now, has never prevented Boualem Sansal from returning to his country. Until this Saturday, November 16. “It’s unusual, usually, pre-trial detentions, it lasts a few days and then the person reappears”analyzes a source who believes in an arrest. In France, of which Boualem Sansal has been a national since this year, Emmanuel Macron's entourage said, Thursday, November 21 in the evening, “very concerned about his disappearance”specifying that “State services are mobilized to clarify his situation”.
