Just two weeks after announcing his intention to leave France, French-Algerian Boualem Sansal returned to confirm, in an interview with the newspaper Ouest-France, that he wants to stay in France.
In this interview, the writer returned to the controversy that followed his release by the Algerian authorities, and explained the reasons that led him to make those angry statements on April 25 from Brussels, where he had joined the Royal Academy of French Language and Literature in Belgium.
On that day, Sansal, affected by a series of criticisms he faced, said: “France is over for me. I only have a few months left in this country, then I will leave.”
But just two weeks later, the 81-year-old author backtracked on this statement, saying in an interview with Ouest-France, on the sidelines of the Montaigu Book Festival in the Vendée region: “No, absolutely not! It will never happen in my lifetime! It was just a fit of anger,” adding: “I am French, and the people who stop me in the street show me a lot of respect.”
To understand the anger of the octogenarian French-Algerian writer , one must go back a few weeks. After his release from Algerian prisons last November, following more than a year of detention, Boualem Sansal subsequently left his historic publishing house Gallimard to join Grasset, a publishing house belonging to the Hachette group owned by billionaire Vincent Bolloré, a supporter of the far right, a move that sparked widespread controversy in literary circles.
The author's arrival at the new publishing house also coincided with the departure of Grasset's CEO, Olivier Nera, which many writers considered a "dismissal" linked to influential businessmen.
Boualem Sansal said: “I became the target, the one who had to be expelled. Until February 25th I was the absolute hero, and after that I became the unlucky one and the ungrateful one.”
The octogenarian writer also spoke of what he calls an “organized campaign against him,” acknowledging his political connections on the French right, particularly with Philippe de Villiers, whom he says he speaks to “fifty times a day,” and with former Interior Minister and current leader of the conservative right-wing party “The Republicans,” Bruno Retailleau. However, he denies any political exploitation of him.
As for his future in France, he seems calmer now, saying: “I think my imprisonment has greatly affected the French, and they are happy to see me free.”
Boualem Sansal is expected to release his new book, La Légende (The Legend), on June 2nd, through his new publishing house, Grasset, in which he revisits his experience of imprisonment in Algeria.
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