Nobel Prize winners in literature support writer Boualem Sansal after his arrest

The Nobel Prize winners for literature Annie Ernaux, Jean-Marie Le Clézio, Orhan Pamuk and Wole Soyinka, as well as several writers including Salman Rushdie and Roberto Saviano, called for the “immediate release” of the Franco-Algerian writer Boualem Sansal, in a column published Saturday on the website of the weekly The Point . «Let us demand the immediate release of Boualem Sansal and all writers imprisoned for their ideas», they wrote in this text initiated by his compatriot Kamel Daoud, Prix Goncourt 2024 and columnist for Point.

«We cannot remain silent. Freedom, the right to culture and our lives, writers targeted by this terror, are at stake.“, they also added. According to several media, the 75-year-old writer was arrested on November 16 at Algiers airport, coming from France. A “arrest» confirmed Friday by the Algerian government agency APS, without specifying a date.

Also read
Boualem Sansal, an ordinary citizen who “says out loud what Algerians think quietly”

The fate of Boualem Sansal, in the fight against religious fundamentalism and authoritarianism, worries political and literary circles. His publisher Gallimard expressed his “very quickly concern” on Friday and called for “(his) immediate release”. On Thursday, President Emmanuel Macron's entourage said that the latter was “very concerned about (this) disappearance” and specified that “state services are mobilized to clarify his situation”, which a source confirmed French diplomatic service on Friday.

According to The Worldthe Algerian authorities could have taken his statements to the French media badly Borderswhich take up the Moroccan position according to which the country's territory was truncated under French colonization for the benefit of Algeria. The official Algerian press agency APS criticized France on Friday for taking “the defense of a Holocaust denier who calls into question the existence, independence, history, sovereignty and borders of Algeria», describing Boualem Sansal as “useful puppet».

These events take place in a tense diplomatic context between France and Algeria, after Paris' support for the Moroccan autonomy plan for the disputed territory of Western Sahara at the end of July.