Boualem Sansal, the 75-year-old Franco-Algerian author renowned in France and globally for his novels critiquing Islamic extremism in Algeria, was detained in Algiers on November 16 upon his return from Paris. This arrest came after initial concerns about Sansal's disappearance, prompting French President Emmanuel Macron to seek information about his whereabouts. Algerian media has confirmed that Sansal is being held in the country, but no official charges have been disclosed. In response to his arrest, French magazine Le Point published a letter by Prix Goncourt winner Kamel Daoud, signed by several prominent authors, calling for Sansal's immediate release. The letter states, "This tragic news reflects an alarming reality in Algeria, where freedom of expression is nothing more than a memory in the face of repression, imprisonment, and the surveillance of the entire society." Signatories include Nobel laureates Annie Ernaux, Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio, Orhan Pamuk, and Wole Soyinka, among others.
Throughout his literary career, Sansal has been a controversial figure due to his critiques of Algeria and its relationship with Islamic extremism, as seen in his 2008 novel "Le village de l'Allemand." Abroad, he has been honored for his work, winning the Prix du Premier Roman and the Prix Nessim Habif in Belgium. In 2012, he received the Editions Gallimard Arabic Novel prize from the Arab Ambassadors Council in Paris, though the €15,000 prize money was later withdrawn due to his visit to the Jerusalem Writers Festival that year. The letter accuses the Algerian government of creating an environment where writers and intellectuals live in fear of reprisals, espionage accusations, arbitrary arrests, and violent media attacks.
Kamel Daoud's full letter, translated into English, reads: "To the defenders of freedom, Today, I address you with deep concern. My friend, the Algerian writer Boualem Sansal, was arrested on Saturday, November 16. This tragic news reflects an alarming reality in Algeria, where freedom of expression is nothing more than a memory in the face of repression, imprisonment, and the surveillance of the entire society. From now on, everything is possible: life imprisonment for a text message, prison for a sigh of annoyance. Sansal looks like an old biblical prophet, smiling. He provokes passions and friendships as much as the hatred of the submissive and the jealous. He is free and amused by life. He writes books about the storms and abstract lights of our time, and he enjoys the hatred of others. Sansal writes, he does not kill and does not imprison anyone. His innocence in the face of the dictatorship made him forget the reality of the Terror in Algeria for several years. He neglected to look at the pack that awaited him, he returned to visit his country that Saturday. He paid dearly for it."
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