Six months ago, when Algerian writer Boualem Sansal was awarded the Frankfurt Book Fair's top honor, the Peace Prize, he was, like many previous winners — Susan Sontag, Orhan Pamuk and Vaclav Havel among them — an author and a cultural icon of great renown.

Nevertheless, the prize came to him at an awkward juncture. While he is one of a small clutch of intellectuals whose calls for freedom inspired the insurrections that have flamed across the Arab world during the past year, he is also one of the revolt's most public targets. Widely popular in France and in Germany, his books are banned in Algeria.

"The Arab Spring has failed completely," Sansal said in an interview with GlobalPost. "It is a catastrophe that only the Islamists will be able to take advantage of."