This Wednesday, May 7, a procedural hearing after Kamel Daoud’s assignment by a young woman who accuses him of having used her story to write her novel to write her novel. HourisGoncourt prices 2024.
first judicial milestone in a sensitive file. Three months after the assignment in justice of author Kamel Daoud by Saâda Arbane, a young Algerian woman who accuses him of having used her story to write his latest novel Houristhis Wednesday, May 7, a procedural hearing is held during which the defense lawyers will know what date they must make their conclusions.
The first in a series of audiences that could, by way, pave the way for a trial, “perhaps at the end of the year or at the beginning of next year,” said the young woman’s lawyers.
On February 13, after having filed two complaints in Algeria, Saâda Arbane assigned the author of Meursault, counter-investigation in court in France. She claims thatHouriswinner of the Goncourt Prize in 2024, was written from his own story, the work following the journey of a young woman made silent when she was small by terrorists who slaughtered her during the civil war of the 1990s in Algeria.
Accusations that the author has rejected as a whole, especially in a chronicle to the point. “This unhappy young woman claims that it is her story. If I can understand her tragedy, my answer is clear: this is completely false,” he wrote in particular.
“He knows very well what he did, better than quinconque. He knew he should not use these elements,” claim my Lily Ravon and William Bourdon, who represent Saâda Arbane.
“She tells him everything about this heavy past”
With their client, they meticulously traveled the work in order to identify similarities between the dawn journey, the character of Kamel Daoud, and that of Saâda Arbane. It comes out of a four -page painting where all these resemblances are listed, starting with the childhood of the young woman who, according to her lawyers, “lived the worst, very small”.
In the midst of a civil war in Algeria, when she was only 6 years old, she lost her parents and five of her brothers and sisters during a terrorist attack. She herself comes out seriously injured, slaughtered by the attackers. Collected by the pediatrician and former Algerian Minister of Health Zahia Mentouri and her husband, who become her adoptive parents, she is operated on numerous occasions, both in Algeria and France, before being able to breathe normally thanks to a cannule. “At the beginning, she remained very mutic, she refused to speak of her story,” said my ravon and bumblebee.
Until we direct the young woman towards a psychiatrist, Aïcha Dahdouh, married to the writer Kamel Daoud. In her, Saâda Arbane “finds listening that suits her” and will be her patient from 2015 to 2023.
“Pandora’s box opens, she tells him everything about this heavy past,” said her lawyers.
Between the two women there is a very strong relationship, which goes beyond the medical framework, since they even go on vacation together with their children, according to my Bourdon and Ravon.
A proximity which explains, according to her, that Saâda Arbane was very injured by learning of the work of Kamel Daoud. From the drama on which his life was built in his medical particularities, including his adoption … Many elements of the novel have been drawn from his life, she believes.
The young woman will argue having declined several requests from the writer: invited in 2021 to her psychiatrist in 2021 for a coffee, she would have told her about her desire to adapt her story in a novel. What she says she categorically refused.
Later, the same year, Aïcha Dahdouh would have made the same request to the adoptive mother of Saâda Arbane. In turn, Zahia Mentouri would have declined. Finally, in 2024, after the publication of the book, Aïcha Dahdouh would have asked the young woman this time if she gave her green light for an adaptation to the cinema. Request rejected again.
“My novel has nothing to do with this woman”
In an interview with France Inter, on December 11, the winner of the Goncourt Prize insistently denied having told the course of Saâda Arbane in Hourisbut that of many victims of the civil war.
-“I interviewed lots of people. There were tens of thousands of deaths, tens of thousands of mutilated. (…) The fact that she recognizes herself in a novel that does not quote her, who does not tell her life, who does not tell the details of her life … I am sorry, I can do nothing about it. Our colleagues.
In response, the defenders of Saâda Arbane say that certain details of the book do not deceive. Starting with the famous cannula that their client uses to breathe and its positioning below its 17 cm scar at the throat. A unique device of its kind, as reported by several doctors who followed the young woman’s medical journey, and whose testimonies were delivered to justice.
“From the first words in the book HourisI therefore recognized Saâda, page after page: description of the cervical scar, the type of cannula (…), the labial scars, the larynx transplant “, details one of them.
Another example of rapprochement between the character of Aube and Saâda Arbane: in her twenty, pregnant, the young woman had hesitated to abort, but entrusted according to her lawyers only in very few people in his entourage on this subject, abortion being prohibited in her country.
“As she asked herself the question of abortion, she had three abortive pills in her possession which she ultimately did not take,” she indicated in the assignment. The same detail around the three pills appears in the novel on several occasions, underlines the lawyers of Saâda Arbane.
Kamel Daoud denounces political instrumentalization
In the viewfinder of Algerian power for several years already, and all the more since he publicly has been defense of Boualem Sansal, an author imprisoned in Algeria, Kamel Daoud believes that the speech of the young woman was manipulated by Algiers to feed hatred against him.
“This defamation campaign had lasted for months, but there, the regime reached violent delirium,” wrote the one that makes a short test appear, Sometimes you have to betrayin the Gallimard leaflet collection, Thursday, May 8. His novel Houris is also prohibited in Algeria.
The lawyers of Saâda Arbane castigate what they call a “strategy of despair” on the part of Kamel Daoud who, according to them, knew which sanctions he was exposed by publishing this book. “He takes advantage of the political context of crisis between Paris and Algiers,” they comment, saying that there is “no more depoliticized” than their client.
Contacted, Kamel Daoud’s lawyer, Me Jacqueline Laffont replied in writing that “in any event, and on the merits, Kamel Daoud firmly disputes any attack on private life.”
“(He) will demonstrate point by point the absence of the slightest legal and factual foundation of the allegations contained in the summons and relayed in a disturbing political context which cannot be elected,” she continues.
Freedom of creation is “not without limit”
If there is a trial in this case, it remains to be seen how the judge will decide between the testimony of the complainant and the refutation of the writer. Because the concept of privacy is not clearly defined by law. “Overall, everything that is not known in the public sphere is a private life,” sums up with BFMTV.com the lawyer Elvire Bochaton, specialized in intellectual property law.
According to her, “there is a freedom of creation and expression, but it is not without limit. The judge will make a balance and decide what is the most affected freedom”, namely, that of creation, or respect for privacy.
While some authors imagine that it is enough to change the name of a person to escape such accusations, Elvire Bochaton denies. “No, that is not enough. It is a great myth. The person must be absolutely not recognizable,” explains the lawyer. The same goes for warnings that writers sometimes display at the start of the novel, indicating that any resemblance to real facts is fortuitous: “It has no legal value.”
“You cannot be exempt from its responsibility by putting a warning,” explains Elvire Bochaton.
When this kind of dissensation emerges, the use of a trial remains rare, the different parties often finding an arrangement before arriving in court. In civil procedure (this is the case of the Kamel Daoud file), the infringement of privacy can give rise to the payment of damages or to certain measures such as the withdrawal of the book or its modification. In criminal, it is liable to one year of imprisonment and a fine of up to 45,000 euros.
