The veteran Algerian writer Boualem Sansal weighed in Thursday to defend his compatriot Kamel Daoud, who is at the centre of storm over his claim that sex "is the greatest misery in the world of Allah".
Daoud, who won France's top literary prize the Prix Goncourt last year, sparked outrage for an article he wrote in France's Le Monde daily in the wake of the wave of sexual assaults in Cologne on New Year's Eve.
.... But Sansal, the elder statesman of Algerian letters, rallied to his cause Thursday, writing in the French newspaper Liberation that "saving Kamel Daoud is saving liberty, justice and the truth".
Earlier this month a radical Algerian preacher was jailed for six months for calling for Daoud's death, while a group of French academics and intellectuals signed an open later berating the writer and journalist.
- 'Politically correct terror' -
"We are cursed," said Sansal, whose own latest book "2084" is a nightmare vision of an Orwellian Islamic state. [AFP] Read more
