Three years ago, Saâda Arbane says she was invited to the couple’s home for coffee. “Kamel Daoud asked me if it was possible to tell my story in a novel, I refused. When his wife later told me he was writing a book, I told her I hoped it wasn’t about my story. She told me: ‘Not at all…I’m here to protect you’“she narrates in French.
Accompanied by her husband during the interview, this woman is helped by a device (cannula) to be able to express herself, following the attempted slitting of her throat. According to her, there are several points in common between the character of Houris and his. “My scar, my cannula, the tattoos, the abortion, the hair salon, Lofti high school, my relationship with my mother, the operation I had to undergo in France…”
As a reminder, in his work, Kamel Daoud first takes the “voice” d’Aube, a 25-year-old young woman who hides behind a scarf a long scar that an Islamist gave her. Her vocal cords have been severed and she needs a cannula to be able to breathe.
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It would be a friend of hers, based in France, who recognized her story during a discussion with a third party. She would have sent him a message.
Saâda Arbane would then have informed Kamel Daoud’s wife who, according to her, sent him the signed book. “My privacy has been revealed. It’s not possible”explains the one who says “not having slept for three days” after reading the book.
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Defamatory campaign
For his part, Antoine Gallimard, the publisher of Hourisreacted in a press release. “And Houris is inspired by tragic events that occurred in Algeria during the civil war of the 1990s, its plot, its characters and its heroine are purely fictional”defended the publisher, recalling that since publication “Kamel Daoud is the subject of violent defamatory campaigns orchestrated by certain media close to a regime whose nature is well known.”
Before receiving the Goncourt Prize, Kamel Daoud’s book had already been talked about in Algeria. First, because the author had left his country to write it. Then, because the book, written in French, was not published in Algeria where it is forbidden to talk about the “black decade”, a civil war which caused between 100,000 and 200,000 victims. Finally, because Gallimard was excluded from the Algiers Book Fair. “It is the turn of his wife who did not in any way source the writing of Houristo be affected in his professional integrity”concludes the press release.
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