A sudden police raid, without “explanation”. The police burst into a bookstore in Béjaïa, in eastern Algeria, during the presentation of a book by its French writer, Dominique Martre, and arrested her, her publisher and participants before releasing them a few hours later, the publisher told AFP this Sunday.
“The police burst into the bookstore on Saturday afternoon at the start of the book presentation Kabylia shared and arrested everyone present in the room, including the author, her husband, myself and the bookseller,” said her publisher Arezki Ait-Larbi, who runs the Koukou publishing house. “We were taken to the police station before being released around 8 p.m.,” he added.
“La Kabylie en partage, dans l’encontre des femmes”, published and sold in Algeria, relates the memories of Dominique Martre in a village in Kabylie in the 1970s, and recounts the experiences of women in this predominantly Amazigh region in northern Algeria. On Sunday, the writer was “still in Béjaïa without restrictions on her freedom”, according to her publisher.
The reasons for this police raid on the Librairie Gouraya have not been revealed. “We have no explanation for the reason for this ban, the book is sold in all bookstores,” said Arezki Ait-Larbi. Last week, she presented her book in Algiers “without any problem,” he continued.
The Koukou publishing house has already been the subject of censorship in recent years in Algeria. In 2022, she said that 12 of her books, mainly on political topics, had been banned at Algeria’s main book fair, SILA.
