The vagueness surrounding the arrest of Boualem Sansal when he got off the plane in Algiers on November 16 had to begin to dissipate before the world of letters mobilized in his favor. On November 23, two days after concerns about his fate were made public, and one day after the Algerian government agency APS confirmed the arrest of the Franco-Algerian writer, several Nobel Prize winners in literature (the French Annie Ernaux and JMG Le Clézio, the Turkish Orhan Pamuk and the Nigerian Wole Soyinka) ask for their immediate release by signing on the weekly’s website The pointa column written by Kamel Daoud.
“We cannot remain silent. “Freedom, the right to culture and our lives, writers attacked by terror are at stake.”states this text, also signed by authors who have been attacked or threatened, such as the American-British Salman Rushdie, victim of an assassination attempt in August 2022, and the Italian Roberto Saviano, forced to live under permanent police protection. Other great names in world literature are involved, such as the German Peter Sloterdijk, the Ukrainian Andreï Kourkov, the Egyptian Alaa El Aswany, as well as French authors such as Sylvain Tesson, Leïla Slimani, Philippe Claudel, Giuliano da Empoli, Jean-Baptiste Andréa, Jean-Marie Rouart or Bernard-Henri Lévy.
If the 2014 French Nobel Prize in Literature, Patrick Modiano, did not sign this text, it is undoubtedly because he associated himself with the thirty winners of the Grand Prix de l’Académie française (prize awarded to Boualem Sansal in 2015 for 2084: the end of the worldGallimard). In a column published on the website of the FigaroOn Sunday, November 24, they launch an appeal to the Algerian authorities. “so that they guarantee the physical protection and respect for the basic rights of our friend.”
Individual voices
In addition to these collective initiatives, individual voices are being heard this weekend. Thus, Jean-Christophe Rufin, a member of said academy, makes it known that he suggested to others “ immortals » one “emergency vote” elect Boualem Sansal under the leadership – the Academy did not mention it in its brief statement of support on Monday the 25th. For his part, Tahar Ben Jelloun denounces, in a text in Spot, “hatred of intelligence” specific for “dictators”write it down “Context of a diet. [algérien] that hardens »and asks the French president to “do everything possible to free the French writer and citizen Boualem Sansal”.
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