Policy Exchange is delighted to host the leading Algerian-French novelist Boualem Sansal – sometimes described as the “Algerian Orwell” for his fierce critiques of both authoritarianism and Islamism in North Africa and more widely in the Arab world. 

This will be Sansal’s first public keynote since his release in November 2025 from prison in Algeria, where he had been sentenced to five years for “undermining national unity” after remarks in which he questioned the country’s borders.  

Sansal’s release followed a campaign led by his French publisher Éditions Gallimard. The international outcry included voices as diverse as Emmanuel Macron and Salman Rushdie – and culminated in a successful request for clemency from German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier. 

Sansal’s books include 2084: The End of the World (Europa Editions, 2017); Harraga (Bloomsbury, 2015); and An Unfinished Business (Bloomsbury, 2008), the latter a novel concerning two brothers of Algerian-German heritage, who following the discovery of their late father’s effects attempt to come to terms with the Shoah, one of the great taboos of local culture. 

Sansal is a 2011 winner of the Peace Prize of the German Publishers and Booksellers Association in 2013 he won the Grand Prix de la Francophonie from the Academie française and in 2015 the Grand Prix du Roman de l’Academie française. On 1 January 2026, it was announced Sansal is becoming a Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur. 

He is currently working on a new book about his prison experiences in Algeria.

This event was covered by:

• The Spectator
• Lesfrancais.Press