IWe were forbidden to come, without being given a reason”, specified a spokesperson for the publishing house.
Thursday afternoon, no confirmation or comment was obtained from Algiers.
The 27e edition of the Algiers Book Fair, at the Palais des exhibitions des Pins maritimes, is scheduled from November 6 to 16.
Gallimard’s flagship novel during this literary season is Houris, by the Franco-Algerian Kamel Daoud, a fiction which looks back on the civil war in Algeria, between 1992 and 2002, also called the “black decade”.
However, as the author writes in his novel, Algerian law prohibits any mention in a book of the bloody events of this period, which prevents Houris from being published or even imported.
On the Actualitté website, which revealed the affair, CEO Antoine Gallimard clarified that the other publishing houses of his group, Madrigall, would not go to this show either, out of solidarity.
As for the reasons for this ban, “it is allowed to imagine everything, given that their mail (that of the organizers) does not give details”, commented Mr. Gallimard.
Kamel Daoud deplored the banning of his book in Algeria in front of the audience at the Correspondances de Manosque literary festival at the end of September. But, he noted, “my book is read in Algeria because it is pirated. It is not published, unfortunately. But it is criticized, it is commented on. And, it is a fault of our time, it is even by people who have not read it”.
The professional organization of French publishers expressed its solidarity with Gallimard in a press release published Thursday.
“The National Publishing Union and its members deeply regret this exclusion. The circulation of books and their authors is a constant concern between France and Algeria”, we read in this press release.
