Confessions of a French editor on Kamel Daoud's novel and Goncourt

By Nabil D. – A French publisher commented on Kamel Daoud's book which has just won the Goncourt Prize. “I’m French, but I can give my opinion. In French law, the invasion of privacy is certified as soon as those close to you can identify you. For the novel [Houris]I am on page 188 and, frankly, not very well written, neither close to good literature nor to the level of Goncourt,” comments this editor in a message posted on social networks.

“A little shocking, but hey, we’ll move on. Gallimard disappoints us this time. The only interesting parts are ultimately those belonging in the narrow sense to the real victim, perhaps copied directly from her file and confessions to her psychiatrist. Apart from that, nothing fun,” notes the editor. “I guess the people who actually read it were the jury members who voted against it,” he notes.

“We are no longer in the time of clichés. And he's full of it to make it a compilation of reports,” notes the editor, determined to finish reading it “so that he can talk about it with friends, but it won't be the book I'm going to give for Christmas.”

“The victim has already experienced a terrible trauma, her medical file stolen and published, she must suffer again today to fuel the sales of her blood, now become ink printed on paper, presenting her as a debauchee in a ruined country,” he regrets, indicating that a passage, taken from page 22, “seems straight out of the biography of the victim’s mother”. “His lawyer said so. Except that at the time, it was a church and not yet a mosque,” ​​he corrects.

Kamel Daoud “should have spoken, if he has nothing to reproach himself for. Protected by his new price, he would still have had every interest in justifying himself once and for all. I would add that to date I have never read anything laudatory about Algeria, except from Voltaire, Théophile Gauthier and Maupassant. Otherwise, everything else is always excessively negative and blackened. This is why I preferred to listen to Algerians this time,” explains this editor.

“A botched book, on a delicate and serious subject, caught in the political winds. Nothing literary basically,” he notes, affirming to be “disappointed for the Goncourt 2024”, which “seems to join the 1924 vintage”, awarded to Thierry Sandre, for his novel The Honeysuckle. “The author was also condemned as was his book a few years later,” recalls this French publisher. He concluded his message by saluting Algeria and the Algerians “who had a long fight against bloodthirsty fanatics”.

N. D.