Boualem Sansal

Sansal was awarded the 2015 Grand Prix du roman de l'Académie française for his novel 2084: la fin du monde.

Sansal was the recipient of the 2012 Editions Gallimard Arabic Novel prize for his book "Rue Darwin." The prize is awarded by the Arab Ambassadors Council, based in Paris. However, after the Council learned that Sansal had attended the Jerusalem Writers Festival earlier in the year, they revoked the 15,000 euros prize money he had been slated to receive. Commenting on the decision to withdraw the prize money, Sansal said it was "completely unacceptable", adding that Arab countries – and his home country, Algeria, in particular – had "shut themselves in a prison of intolerance". France Culture radio director and head of the jury that awarded the prize, Olivier Poivre d'Avror, said before resigning his post in protest, the prize money had been withdrawn as a "sordid" consequence of Hamas pressure. "Between being nominated for the prize and actually receiving it, Boualem Sansal visited Israel … Hamas immediately issued a statement calling his presence an act of treason against the Palestinians. The reaction of Arab Ambassadors Council was a direct result of this." A spokeswoman for the Arab Ambassadors Council claimed the council's decision had not been influenced by the Hamas statement on the matter. Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman urged the international community to denounce the boycott against Sansal.

On 16 October 2011 Sansal received the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade. On 19 December 2011, he was announced as being on the jury for the 62nd Berlin International Film Festival, scheduled to be held in February 2012.

Sansal's 2008 novel Le village de l'Allemand ou le journal des frères Schiller, is the story of two Algerian brothers who burrow into the past and discover that their father had been a Nazi officer who fled to Algeria after the war. The book explores the fine line between Islamic fundamentalism and Nazism. Le Village de l'allemand is the first of Sansal's novels to be translated into English, and was published in the US in September 2009 as The German Mujahid and in the UK as An Unfinished Business.

Since the publication of Poste restante: Alger. Lettre de colère et d'espoir à mes compatriotes in 2006, Sansal's books have been banned in Algeria.

Sansal's work has won top literary awards in France, among them the Prix du Premier Roman in 1999 for his debut novel, Le serment des Barbares (Gallimard, 1999), which has since been made into a film based on a screenplay by Jorge Semprún.

Boualem Sansal was born in Théniet El Had, Tissemsilt. Trained as an engineer with a doctorate in economics, he began writing novels at the age of 50 after retiring from his job as a high-ranking official in the Algerian government. The assassination of President Mohamed Boudiaf in 1992 and the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in Algeria inspired him to write about his country. Sansal continues to live with his wife and two daughters in Algeria despite the controversy his books have aroused in his homeland. At the 2007 International Festival of Literature in Berlin, he was introduced as a writer "exiled in his own country. " He claims that Algeria is becoming a bastion of Islamic extremism and the country is losing its intellectual and moral underpinnings.

1986: La Combustion dans les turboréacteurs, OPU, Alger. 1989: La Mesure de la productivité, OPU, Alger

Boualem Sansal (Arabic: بوعلام صنصال; born 15 October 1949) is an Algerian author. In 2012, he was named winner of the Prix du roman arabe, but the prize money was withdrawn due to Sansal's visit to Israel to speak at the Jerusalem Writers Festival.