President Macron joins calls for information about Franco-Algerian novelist Boualem Sansal, missing in Algiers.

Alarm grew in France on Friday over the fate of a prominent French-Algerian novelist detained in the country of his birth, with his publisher urging his immediate release and President Emmanuel Macron closely following the case.

The concerns about his reported arrest come as another prominent French-Algerian writer Kamel Daoud is under attack over his novel Houris, which won France's top literary prize, the Goncourt. A woman has claimed the book was based on her story of surviving 1990s Islamist massacres and used without her consent.

The French publisher of French-Algerian writer Boualem Sansal on Friday called for his immediate release from detention in Algeria, confirming reports he had been detained in his home country. The Gallimard publishing house,

France says it's "very concerned" about the disappearance of French-Algerian writer Boualem Sansal, who has not been heard from since he was reportedly taken into police custody upon his arrival in Algeria on Saturday.