The publisher Antoine Gallimard deplored on Monday the “silence” of the organizers of the Algiers International Book Fair who, in the run-up to the Goncourt Prize awarded Monday to Kamel Daoud, banned the publishing house from coming and then did not did not wish to explain. This ban was notified to Editions Gallimard at the beginning of October, when “Houris”, the Franco-Algerian novel on the violence of the “black decade”, the civil war of 1992-2002, was seen as one of the great favorites of the Goncourt Prize.
On Monday, while this novel won the prize, Antoine Gallimard deplored the ban on the book in Algeria, where it is illegal to sell works relating to this period. “It’s unfortunate. And it’s also unfortunate, moreover, since Algeria prevented us from being present at the Book Fair,” he commented, interviewed by AFP. “But I think that in Algeria they are strong enough to find a way to read it differently,” added the boss of the Madrigall group, in reference to the pirate editions which are circulating. Asked about the dialogue he could have had with the organizers of the Book Fair, he replied that there had been “none”. “We tried but they didn’t answer, there was no one there. The law of silence,” he explained.
Not “a vindictive political gesture” for the president of the jury
Jurors of the Prix Goncourt denied that this ban on the novel influenced their choice. “We absolutely should not see this book, nor even its consecration by the Académie Goncourt, as a vindictive political gesture against a friendly country” underlined the president of the jury, Philippe Claudel. “And I think that literature, precisely, can make it possible to reestablish, to sew up links that some people are too inclined to want to tear, or perhaps have an interest in seeing torn,” he added.
“I don’t believe at all that there is a desire for confrontation,” commented, for her part, Christine Angot, another juror. “We have a voice. It is the only voice that says what needs to be said. So we cannot ignore it, recognize it, bow to it. We cannot act as if we do not hear what he says,” she said about Kamel Daoud.
