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Authors including Salman Rushdie, Annie Ernaux and Wole Soyinka have called for the immediate release of Franco-Algerian novelist Boualem Sansal.
The 75-year-old was arrested in Algiers on arrival from Paris on 16 November, it has now been reported by an Algerian press agency. His disappearance led to many calls for information about his whereabouts, including from Emmanuel Macron.
A call for the author’s release, as well as that of “all writers imprisoned for their ideas”, was published by French publication Le Point on Saturday, written by Algerian novelist and Le Point columnist Kamel Daoud.
“This new tragedy reflects an alarming reality in Algeria, where freedom of expression is only a memory in the face of repression, imprisonments and the surveillance of the whole of society,” Daoud wrote.
As well as Rushdie, Ernaux and Soyinka, signatories of Daoud’s letter include Orhan Pamuk, Andreï Kourkov, Leïla Slimani, Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio, Peter Sloterdjik and Alaa el Aswany.
An outspoken critic of Islamism and the Algerian regime, Sansal published his first novel at the age of 50. Since 2006, when he wrote his essay Poste Restante Algeria: An Open Letter to My Compatriots in Anger, his books have been banned in Algeria.
Le Point has suggested his alleged arrest could be linked to recent statements made to the far-right French media Frontières, when he said Western Sahara was historically part of Morocco.
The former Spanish colony is a territory that Algeria and Morocco have contested for decades. In October, President Macron said he believes the land should be under Moroccan sovereignty, increasing tensions between France and Algeria.
French publisher Gallimard, which has been publishing Sansal’s books for 25 years, has hired lawyer François Zimeray to defend the author, according to Agence France Presse.
Meanwhile, Daoud is facing legal action of his own, after being accused of basing his novel Houris, which won France’s top literary prize the Prix Goncourt earlier this month, on the life of one of his psychiatrist wife’s patients.
Sansal is known for his novels Le Serment des Barbares, which won France’s Prix du Premier Roman, a prize for debut novels, in 1999, and Le Village de l’Allemand, the first of his books to be translated into English, as An Unfinished Business (2010).
In 2012, Sansal was awarded French literary award the Prix du Roman Arabe, for Arabic literature written or translated into French, for his novel Rue Darwin. However, the prize money was withdrawn by the Arab ambassadors who finance the award because of Sansal’s appearance at the Jerusalem writers festival in Israel.
