On November 16, Boualem Sansal was arrested upon arrival at Algiers airport, Algeria. Contrary to international law, Sansal was held for a week without legal counsel and interrogated without his lawyer.
Sansal was then charged with national security-related offenses under article 87 bis of the Algerian penal code, a provision which has been condemned for its regular use against those who criticize the government.
Sansal has won multiple prizes for his writing, including the Prix du Premier Roman in 1999 for his debut novel, Le serment des Barbares, and the Arab Novel Prize in 2012 for his novel Rue Darwin. He is best known for his dystopian novel 2084: The End of the World, which was inspired by George Orwell's classic Nineteen-Eighty Four. Sansal's work, which is set in an Islamist totalitarian world post nuclear holocaust, earned him the Grand Prix du Roman of the French Academy in 2015.
The 75-year-old writer is also known as a controversial figure, having been vocal against authoritarianism and Islamism, as well as campaigning on freedom of expression issues.
Fellow French-Albanian writer Kamel Daoud created a petition asking for Sansal's immediate release. The petition was co-signed by fellow prominent writers including the likes of Salman Rushdie and Turkish Nobel winner Orhan Pamuk.
Boualem Sansal Books
2084
2084 is “a rare, powerful book, at the intersection of fable and lampoon, of satire and science fiction,” a cry of freedom, a gripping novel of ideas, and an indictment of the kind of closed-minded fundamentalism that threatens our democracies and the ideals on which they are founded (Lire).
“Alison Anderson’s deft and intelligent translation [conveys] Sansal’s abhorrence of a system that controls people’s minds, while explaining that the religion was not originally evil but has been corrupted. A moving and cautionary story.” —The Times Literary Supplement
The German Mujahid
“The German Mujahid deals with the fine line between the destructive power wielded by Islamic fundamentalism today and the power of another movement that left an indelible mark on history: Nazism.” —Haaretz (Israel)
“With extraordinary eloquence, Sansal condemns both the [Algerian] military and the Islamic fundamentalists; he decries that Algeria crippled by trafficking, religion, bureaucracy, the culture of illegality, of coups, and of clans, career apologists, the glorification of tyrants, the love of flashy materialism, and the passion for rants.” —Lire (France)
Featured image courtesy of ActuaLitté, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
