Never in my life! : Writer Boualem Sansal asserts that he finally gives up on leaving France

“I’m done with France, I have a few months left to spend in this country and then I’m out,” declared the Franco-Algerian author to LCI at the end of April.

He has chosen to stay. The Franco-Algerian writer Boualem Sansal announces to Ouest-France newspaper that he is finally giving up on leaving France, after expressing his desire to do so at the end of April due to “attacks” and “insults” he received. “I’m done with France, I have a few months left to spend in this country and then I’m out,” the author explained on LCI after his entry into the Royal Academy of French Language and Literature in Belgium.

Asked about this decision on the sidelines of the Montaigu Book Festival (Vendée), the writer dismissed the idea: “No, not at all! Never in my life! It was a fit of anger. I am French by nationality, and people who approach me in the street show me a lot of sympathy. I believe that my ordeal has touched the French a lot and they are happy to see me free,” he argues.

Returning to France after his pardon by the Algerian authorities in November 2025, Boualem Sansal has criticized France several times, labeling it “worse than the dictatorship in Algeria”, as he lambasted it in the columns of Le Figaro at the end of April. “I am leaving Gallimard and it’s a huge plot against me. I am dragged through the mud morning and evening in the newspapers,” he criticizes to Ouest-France, convinced that he has “become the man to be taken down, the one to be chased away.” At the same time, the return of the French ambassador to Algeria is, according to him, a positive sign: “It means that there is a change for the better. It also means above all that Christophe Gleizes will hopefully be released in the coming days,”.