The Novel That Frightened Hamas and the Arab League
All fascisms resemble each other. The clothes may change, and likewise the name. The fundamentals remain the same. Islamism is a fascism, totalitarian, bellicose, sectarian, exactly as was Nazism. If there is a difference, it is in the means. Nazism had under its control the formidable industry and military of Germany, while Islamism is for the moment at an artisanal stage : Algerian writer Boualem Sansal, author of Darwin Street.
The Arab Novel Prize was created in 2008 by the ambassadors of the Arab countries in France to honor a book by an Arab writer that was either composed in French or translated into French. Each year a jury of literary and cultural worthies, Arab and French and both, has picked the winner. The diplomats have held a ceremony to bestow the award of 15,000 euros, which is not a lot. But it is not a little either, and to be honored is wonderful.
This year the jury selected the Algerian writer Boualem Sansal and his novel Rue Darwin, or Darwin Street. The award ceremony was supposed to take place in June, but at the last minute the diplomats cancelled the event and withdrew the money, citing “present events in the Arab world.” Sansal’s publisher, Éditions Gallimard, held a modest ceremony anyway in the publisher’s office a couple of weeks later, and went on to wrap a red paper ribbon around new copies of the book, boasting of the prize and listing the prestigious names of the jury. But there was no money for the prize-winner. One of the jury members wrote an indignant open letter, which ran in Libération, the left-wing newspaper, resigning from the jury and revealing what had taken place. The juror was Olivier Poivre d’Arvor, the director of France Culture, which is France’s equivalent of National Public Radio, except grander. Poivre d’Arvor explained that, between the moment when Sansal’s novel had been selected and the day when the official ceremony was scheduled to occur, a bit of politics had intruded.
In recent years Boualem Sansal has emerged as Algeria’s best-known writer in the wider world, which is a dramatic development considering that, until the age of fifty, he pursued a career in the Algerian civil service, evidently without difficulty or controversy. But he made the mistake of taking up literature, and, in the dozen years that have followed, controversy seems to have attended him like a shadow. The French learned this in 2008.. Read more:
