France Authors call on Macron to restore 'lifeline' for Palestinian writers

Sally Rooney, Deborah Levy, the Nobel laureate Annie Ernaux and the Pulitzer prize winner Viet Thanh Nguyen are among 20 authors urging Emmanuel Macron to resume a “lifeline” programme for evacuating Palestinian writers, scholars and artists from Gaza.

- Philip Oltermann

The Pause programme for writers and artists in emergency situations, as well as a student evacuation programme, were suspended by the French government at the beginning of August over a Palestinian student’s allegedly antisemitic online remarks, a decision the authors said amounted to “collective punishment”.

“As writers, we urge you to restore this lifeline as soon as possible, and to call on other heads of state to create similar programmes,” says the letter, which was sent to the French president's office on Friday.