On 1 July: Boualem Sansal will be giving a reading at the Literaturhaus Leipzig following his release

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Under the motto “Here, we don’t burn books. We do better than that: we bury writers”, Boualem Sansal, the Algerian-French author and winner of the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, will be reading on Wednesday 1 July at 7.30 pm in the garden of the Literaturhaus Leipzig. The focus of the evening, organised in cooperation with the German Book and Writing Museum, will be a preview of Sansal’s novel *The Legend*, which has just been published in France and in which the author reflects on his time in prison in Algeria and the period following his release.

The novel describes his arrest and how, after days of interrogation, he was tried in a five-minute trial – without a lawyer – and sentenced to five years’ imprisonment on charges of allegedly endangering national unity, espionage and terrorism, despite his serious illness.

In conversation with Alfonso de Toro, a long-standing friend of Sansal’s and an expert on his work, the 81-year-old Sansal offers an insight into his so-called ‘crimes’. He had done what writers and intellectuals must do: express his opinion and report on a country and its president, Abdelmadjid Tebboune, whom the inmates of the prison where Sansal was held referred to simply as ‘Teb the Accursed’.

Sansal, on the other hand, was known to his fellow inmates simply as ‘The Legend’, for he is a source of hope to them; together they write poems and speculate about a possible change of regime.

Following numerous international efforts, the author was finally released in November 2025. Sansal subsequently wrote *The Legend* within 40 days. It is a breathless account, an angry book, the German translation of which is due to be published this summer by Merlin Verlag. In Leipzig, where efforts to secure Sansal’s release began very early on and a protest resolution originating here gathered more than 27,000 signatures worldwide, the author will now read from his text for the first time.

Tickets are available at the box office or at: https://rausgegangen.de/events/boualem-sansal-friedensstifter-und-demokrat-0/