Boualem Sansal, the French-Algerian novelist who was jailed by Algeria in November 2024 amid of a diplomatic crisis between Paris and Algiers, was elected to join the Académie française on Thursday.
Sansal, who was pardoned by Algeria's president last November after spending a year in jail, joins the 40 lifelong members of the Académie, traditionally known as the "immortels" (immortals).
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The writer was a late contender for the seat left vacant by the late lawyer and writer Jean-Denis Bredin, after no candidate won a majority in an earlier vote in December.
Other candidates included Belgian poet Philippe Leuckx.
Known as the guardian of the French language, the Académie is tasked with maintaining the language's purity and publishes an official dictionary.
In early December, the Académie honoured Sansal at a ceremony where he received the international literary award the Cino del Duca World Prize for his work.
In 2015, he won the Académie's Grand Prix du Roman for his book "2084: The End of the World", a dystopian novel inspired by George Orwell's "1984" and set in an Islamist totalitarian world in the aftermath of a nuclear holocaust.
Diplomatic spat
Sansal's novels warning of the risks of creeping authoritarianism but also Islamisation have made him a favourite on the right in France but deeply unpopular with the authorities in his country of birth.
Algeria handed Sansal a five-year jail term in March on charges of undermining its territorial integrity after arresting him in November last year on arrival from France.
His detention was seen by supporters as a consequence of a political row between Algeria and France over sovereignty of the territory of the Western Sahara, where Paris backs the claim of Algiers' north African rival Morocco.
Weeks before his arrest, Sansal told a far-right French media outlet that France had unjustly transferred Moroccan territory to Algeria during the 1830-1962 colonial period.
Even after Sansal's release, prominent French sports journalist Christophe Gleizes remains in an Algerian prison, sentenced to seven years for "glorifying terrorism" for having sought to interview an outlawed group.
(FRANCE 24 with AFP)
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