The Algerian writer Boualem Sansal faces a complex equation: how to firmly denounce the ideological authoritarianism of both the Algerian government and the Islamists without risking falling into ideological authoritarianism. Can the citizen/reader’s autonomy and critical thinking be promoted while one is trying to convince him-her of one’s own opinion? In other words, can democracy be imposed? It is to solve that paradox that, from his very first novel, Sansal experiments the hybridization of two seemingly antagonistic logics: that of the roman à thèse and that of metatextual fiction. The merging of those two natural enemies gives birth to the idea of the fictional space as the training field for democracy through multiple strategies which aim to strongly engage the reader.