Promoting his latest novel I will take away the fire, the Franco-Moroccan journalist speaks about the situation of the writer detained for two months in Algeria.
In full promotion of his new novel I will take away the fire , available in bookstores since Thursday, January 23, a family fresco spanning the upheavals of Morocco throughout the second half of the 20th centurye century, Leïla Slimani took the opportunity to discuss the situation of Boualem Sansal. The 75-year-old writer has been imprisoned by the Algerian authorities since November 16 for “ attack on state security, national unity, territorial integrity and even the normal functioning of institutions », according to Algerian law for his novels which deal with the Algerian political regime and Islamism.
Guest of the show The Great Bookstore, broadcast on France 5, Leïla Slimani answered the question “ why does a regime target a writer and in particular here Boualem Sansal? » To which she denounces an attack on freedom of expression. “ Because Boualem Sansal is a free path, because he is a conscience, because for twenty years he has been trying to hold up a mirror, a regime which refuses to look at this reflection and therefore the answer to your question is in your question : he is in prison because he is a writer and for this type of regime, it is unbearable to hear a free voice express itself and tell the truth of this society which is entirely in prison», declared the Franco-Moroccan journalist, who received the Goncourt prize in 2016 for her second novel, sweet song.
Imprisoned for 67 days, the intellectual is detained while he is seriously ill and does not have access to the essential care he should have, his lawyer François Zimeray reported earlier in the month. A committee made up of more than 1,200 members of around twenty nationalities and various sensitivities, mobilized in vain to condemn the detention of Boualem Sansal, a Franco-Algerian.
-A novel about the modern history of Morocco
During the La Grande Librairie program, Leïla Slimani also spoke on the question of growing up as a woman in Morocco at the end of the 20th century.e century, a theme present in his latest novel from a trilogy which traces the modern history of Morocco and its post-colonial period through the characters of Mathilde and Amine.
« When we grew up as a woman, in the 80s, in Morocco, we lived with this idea of shame. We live with this idea that we are not innocent anyway. That in any case, we are suspect. There is something in us that is wrong and which means that we have to hide (…) So this shame, we carry it within us and it is all the stronger the more we do not understand it. not. We don't know why. We are ashamed of something we didn't do. We carry the crimes of a kind of original woman (…) this shame is with us all the time,” she said on the set of France 5.
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