Kamel Daoud, Goncourt 2024, present at the Book Fair

The Goncourt 2024 was awarded this Monday, November 4, to Kamel Daoud. The Franco-Algerian author is rewarded for his novel “Houris” published by the publisher. Gallimard, a fiction about the massacres of the Algerian “black decade” from 92 to 2002. The winner of the Goncourt will be present this weekend in Brive (Corrèze) for the Book Fair. A conversation hosted by Olivia Gesbert is notably scheduled for Saturday at 3:30 p.m., at the Gazeau forum.

A novel banned in Algeria

“It's a book that can also give meaning to what we experience in that country. But it was born because I came to France. Because it's a country that gives me the freedom to write“, greeted the 54-year-old Franco-Algerian, at the Drouant restaurant in Paris, where the Goncourt is presented. France “is a country that protects writers“, greeted the man whose freedom of tone ended up forcing him to leave his city of Oran for Paris and take French nationality. “Houris” cannot be published in Algeria, where it falls under the law which prohibits any work evoking the civil war of 1992-2002.

“Houris”, which in the Muslim faith designates young girls promised to paradise, is a dark novel about the fate of Aube, a young woman who has been mute since an Islamist cut her throat on December 31, 1999. Choosing as narrator a woman, Kamel Daoud places the plot first in Oran, the city where he was a journalist during the “black decade”, then in the Algerian desert, where Aube leaves to return to his village.

Gaël Faye also present

The Renaudot was awarded to Gaël Faye for his novel “Jacaranda”. The author and singer will also be in Brive for a musical reading of his award-winning novel, this Friday at 8:30 p.m. at the theater, Espace d'Ormesson.

(With AFP)