The reasons for the police raid have not been disclosed.
Saturday June 29 in Béjaïa, in eastern Algeria, the police burst into a bookstore during the presentation of a book by its French writer, Dominique Martre, and arrested her, her publisher and participants before to release them a few hours later. “The police burst into the bookstore on Saturday afternoon at the start of the presentation of the book La Kabylie en shared and arrested everyone present in the room, including the author, her husband, myself and the bookseller.“, said his 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.
She presented her book in Algiers “without any problem“
The reasons for this police raid on the Librairie Gouraya have not been revealed. “Kabylia shared, in the privacy of women“, published and sold in Algeria, recounts the memories of Dominique Martre in a village in Kabylia in the 1970s, and recounts the experiences of women in this majority Amazigh region of northern Algeria. On Sunday, the writer was “still in Béjaïa without restriction of freedom“, according to his publisher.”We have no explanation as to the reason for this ban, the book is sold in all bookstores“, said Mr. Ait-Larbi. Last week, she presented her book in Algiers.”no problem“, he continued.
This is not the first time that Koukou publishing house has been censored in recent years in Algeria. In 2022, it said that 12 of its books, mostly on political topics, had been banned at Algeria’s main book fair, SILA.
