“We stole a year from Boualem Sansal” | EUROtoday

The Point: What was your first response to the discharge of Boualem Sansal?

Antoine Gallimard: An immense pleasure. Because I’ve all the time been very frightened about him: Boualem has nice power, pen and character, however he’s additionally a dreamer, somebody very meticulous as nicely, and I mentioned to myself, “poor guy, how will he hold up? » I was told that in prison he had a few books with him. I wanted to believe it, and I tried to imagine him as Socrates in his cell… He is out of that cell now. What a relief! Of course, that’s a year too long. A year was stolen from him.

What did you pay particular attention to during his detention?

I heard about his daily life from his wife, who was a constant, essential support for him, and we absolutely must pay tribute to her courage and determination. But what was also crucial was that Boualem, who is a writer, did not become a political object that could be recovered. He was almost trapped when a far-right group tried to nominate him for the Sakharov Prize, which is also a very honorable prize. In full agreement with his wife, the trap was avoided: it had to be clear that the writer’s representatives did not support this candidacy.

ALSO READ Étienne Gernelle: “The lesson of courage and freedom from Boualem Sansal”What does Boualem Sansal characterize for you, who publishes it?

A beautiful man and author. As mild as he’s uncompromising. A daring pen, one of many first Arab voices to denounce Islamism. A person of his time who’s of all instances, passionate each about historic instances and about his period, of which he’s not afraid. Greedy of the whole lot, curious, an engineer by coaching but additionally a memoirist, a follower of Voltaire and Rabelais, who additionally had nice essential scope.

ALSO READ Liberation of Boualem Sansal: behind the scenes of a secret negotiationEditing is just not solely about disseminating concepts and tales, additionally it is about defending and defending those that carry them?

Absolutely, and I’m very fortunate, as an editor, to publish Boualem Sansal, but additionally Arundhati Roy, who takes unbelievable dangers in relation to Indian chief Narendra Modi, like Orhan Pamuk or Roberto Saviano, who’ve been (and typically nonetheless are) threatened of their international locations. All these writers are like fireplace within the fire. They warmth and so they heat us. They enable us to not let ourselves be frozen by worry. The guide, which is usually mentioned to be archaic, stays a real image of freedom and independence. He resists. And we resist because of the guide.

To Discover



Kangaroo of the day

Answer

If you needed to suggest a guide by Boualem Sansal?

You must learn all of them, however the guide that I discover most consultant of what he excels at is The German Village, the place he denounces each Nazism and Islamism. The theme of reminiscence is especially current there. Memory as remembrance. Memory additionally like that which is buried, hidden and which should be dropped at mild. Today, it’s Boualem Sansal who’s introduced again to the sunshine, and nothing makes me happier.

A hyperactive committee

“Make as much noise as possible so that Boualem’s voice does not die out” : this was the strategy of the worldwide committee to help Boualem Sansal, created upon his arrest by Arnaud Benedetti, editor-in-chief of The Political and Parliamentary Review. From François Hollande to Nicolas Sarkozy, from Michel Onfray to Edgar Morin, the committee rallied 2,000 personalities from 20 nationalities round a tough core fashioned by the previous minister Noëlle Lenoir, the director Jean-Paul Scarpitta, the Algerian poet Kamel Bencheikh and the political scientist Stéphane Rozès. Gatherings, public readings, parliamentary lobbying… The committee pulled out all of the stops, not hesitating to castigate “inaction” of European diplomacy and to crush those that took up the toxic little music of “he may have been looking for it…” The lawyer and former diplomat François Zimeray, goal of an anti-Semitic marketing campaign in Algeria, submitted a criticism to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, which responded with a scathing “communication” to the Algerian authorities: “No one should risk enforced disappearance or arbitrary detention for peacefully expressing their views. »“Everyone worked with their weapons and their sensitivity for the liberation of our friend,” retains M^e Zimeray § Nicolas Bastuck