A “manipulated” woman for Daoud
Last November 15, in a video broadcast on the private Algerian channel One TV, Saâda Arbane had accused the Franco-Algerian author Kamel Daoud, Goncourt 2024 prize for Houris (Gallimard), for having stolen his story. “My scar, my cannula, the tattoos, the abortion, the hair salon, the Lofti high school, my relationship with my mother, the operation I had to undergo in France…”, explained the woman whose family was decimated during a massacre when she was six years old.
“Houris is fiction, not biography. It is the tragic story of a people. You just have to READ this novel to see that there is no connection, other than the tragedy of a country”writes Kamel Daoud in The Point by asserting that the complainant was “manipulated.”
As a reminder, in his work, Kamel Daoud first takes the “voice” d’Aube, a young woman of 25 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.
The president of Goncourt tells us about the indiscretions of the prestigious literary prize
Kamel Daoud also defends his wife whose “name has been sullied by defamation and lies”. Because Saâda Arbane claimed to have met the writer’s wife in 2015.She was my psychiatrist, I told her everything”explained the accuser before specifying that at the time she “was not yet” the wife of Kamel Daoud. Saâda Arbane says she was invited to the couple’s home to drink 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 narrated.
For his part, Antoine Gallimard, the publisher ofHourisreacted in a press release at the time of the publication of the video, recalling that, since the release of the book “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.
This Tuesday, the Goncourt Academy decided to suspend Goncourt’s choice of Algeria, because the author ofHouris cannot participate. The jurors also had a thought for another writer: Boualem Sansal. Arrested on November 16, the Franco-Algerian writer, 75, is accused of trying to destabilize the Algerian state and faces life imprisonment. The Academy reaffirmed “his condemnation of any attack on freedom of expression.“
Boualem Sansal: “Humanity has reached the end of its novel”
