Call to bookstores for Boualem Sansal

Published on May 15, 2025 at 2:30 p.m.

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For Guerrick Fouchet, manager of the Gros Câlin bookstore in Paris, his colleagues organize too few events in support of the writer currently imprisoned by the Algerian regime. This encourages the far right to take over the cause.

This article is an op-ed, written by an author outside the newspaper and whose point of view does not reflect the editorial staff's views.

Dear colleagues, dear booksellers,

I met Boualem Sansal about ten years ago at the Book Fair. I wasn't yet a bookseller; I was part of the peaceful world of readers. And like everyone who'd ever met him, directly or indirectly, I had exactly the same feeling: Sansal is one of the kindest and most pleasant people I've ever met. Despite the requests, he seems to control the time, ignoring obligations by responding to everyone who wanted to speak to him. "Do you have a Breton first name? Oh, I love Brittany. Every time I'm there, I'm received like a king. You know, if I weren't Algerian, I'd apply for Breton nationality."

Today, a writer I admire is in prison. Boualem Sansal is forced into retirement behind bars, deprived of all freedom to move and create. He has become much more than a hero for our generation; he is a mirror that reflects the worst and most beautiful in us, and at the same time a compass that points us in the right direction. An old man has succeeded in shaking up a regime. In an age of spiritual and nutritional gurus venerated on the covers of the books we sell, a novelist awakens what is most sacred in Man: breathing.

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I write these words to my dear bookseller colleagues who seem very discreet on this subject. As Alexandre Jardin says: "I don't know Boualem Sansal, but I've read him, so I know him. When you read and love a writer, you don't forget him."

So why are there so few events in bookstores? It seems that the image, the fear of this image, takes precedence over action.

During a conference in favor of his release that I was leading at the town hall of the 8th arrondissement of Paris, someone in the room spoke to share an experience: "I went near the Parliament, to a demonstration in support of Sansal. And to my great surprise, I found only people from the far right. So I left." Not wanting to be associated with a militant and politicized fringe, this person gave up. But this reflects something worrying. Ideas are no longer defended, or can no longer be defended for what they are, but according to those by whom they are taken up. The observation is becoming alarming: either no one supports Sansal's cause anymore for fear of being labeled far right; or we are condemned, by defending the cause of a writer, to fall into the arms of a partisan fringe that puts itself on the front line.

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The bookseller has a professional ethical obligation: never to refuse an order. It doesn't matter if a customer asks for "Mein Kampf," "The Red Book," or "Little Brown Bear." It's our responsibility to offer a diversity of opinions and intellectual currents.

Dear colleagues, do not give up on Sansal, because if you say nothing, you are letting the void fill, and as you know so well with our book tables, the void fills quickly.

I write these lines for all bookstore managers who, unlike their employees, have the privilege, the power, and the chance to take a stand. Everywhere I look, the silence of the low pension seems to have dressed the windows in a veil completely transparent to Mr. Sansal's fate. Yet, more than ever, for the love of language, for the honor of our profession, it is now or never that we can be much more than simple merchants. Dear colleagues, you fought during the pandemic to ensure that books were not a commodity like any other. "Essential commerce," we had the right to be called. But "essential" for what and for whom?

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My dear colleagues, it is Bergson's words that resonate in my bookstore: "Think like a man of action and act like a man of thought." When I think that there are barely forty bookstores in all of Algeria, the presence of a bookstore demonstrates its importance and its place in society. Our choices and tastes impose a rhythm and allow the breath of creativity to keep the breathing of ideas alive.

I'm reading Seneca's "The Retreat." In three pages, there are lines that can change our lives and, with them, that of Boualem Sansal: "We are only capable of perseverance in our choices if no one is there to shake, with the help of the crowd, our still fragile judgment. Entirely dependent on the judgments of others, we consider excellent not that which should have our favor and approval, but that which has the favor and approval of the crowd."

Let us trust each other, and follow our ideas and this fight, regardless of the color of the person holding the same placard as us. Seneca evokes Aesop's fable of "The Lion and the Cunning Fox." The lion pretends to be asleep, all the animals walk in his direction; but they never return. The animals have followed tracks that all go in the same direction, only the fox realizes that none of them turn back. These tracks are those of the glory of Man and, we can also say, of intellectual conformity.

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"Until the very end, we will be in action, without ceasing to work for the common good," says Seneca, whom I cannot bring myself to close. "With us, there is no leave, at any age. As that eloquent warrior says: 'We cover our gray hair with a helmet.' With us, there is no retreat before death! It is so true that, if circumstances permit, even death is not a retreat."

Have your customers read these few lines.

Simply sharing these words will kindle a fraternal warmth in the hearts of readers that will break the bars imprisoning Boualem Sansal. Dear colleagues, it's your role: to make people read! For pleasure? Yes, but above all, to transform fear into justice.

Le Nouvel Observateur

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