Franco-Algerian writer Kamel Daoud and his psychiatrist wife, accused of having used the story of a patient to write the novel Hourisawarded the Prix Goncourt 2024, are at the heart of a controversy which is gaining momentum in Algeria with the announcement on Wednesday of the filing of two complaints against them.
Complaints filed in August
“As soon as the book was published, two complaints against Kamel Daoud and his wife Aicha Dehdouh, the psychiatrist who treated the victim”Saâda Arbane, were deposited in Oran (west), place of residence of Karim Daoud and his wife in Algeria, specified to theAFP lawyer Fatima Benbraham.
Saâda Arbane, survivor of a massacre during the civil war in Algeria in the 1990s, accuses the writer and his wife of having revealed her story without her consent.
“The first complaint was filed on behalf of the National Organization of Victims of Terrorism” et “the second in the name of the victim”specified Me Benbraham, assuring that their filing dates back to August, “a few days after the book was published”well before the award of the Prix Goncourt to the novel at the beginning of November.
“We didn't want to talk about it so that it wouldn't be said that we wanted to disrupt the author's nomination for the prize”she said.
“Violation of my privacy”
According to this lawyer known in Algeria, the complaints relate to “the violation of medical confidentiality, since the doctor (Karim Daoud's wife) handed over all of his patient's file to her husband, as well as the defamation of victims of terrorism and the violation of the law on national reconciliation”which prohibits any publication on the “black decade” of civil war between 1992 and 2002.
Last Friday, Saâda Arbane appeared on the television channel One TVasserting that the story of the novel Houris is his. This survivor of an attempted throat slitting by armed Islamists said she recognized elements of her life: “his cannula (to breathe and speak), his scars, his tattoos, his hair salon”.
Saâda Arbane cited other very personal information such as her relationship with her mother or her desire to have an abortion. She says she confided them, during therapy in 2015, to her psychiatrist who has since married Kamel Daoud, and denounces “a violation of (one’s) privacy”.
According to the latter, the psychiatrist would have invited him three years ago for coffee at her home and, on this occasion, Karim Daoud would have asked her if it was possible to tell her story in a novel, which she says she had. denied.
Gallimard denounces “violent defamatory campaigns”
Kamel Daoud did not respond to these accusations, but his French publisher Gallimard denounced the “violent defamatory campaigns orchestrated (against the writer) by certain media close to a regime whose nature no one is ignorant of”.
“Yes 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”said Gallimard.
The novel, which takes place in Oran, tells the story of a young woman who lost the use of speech during a massacre on December 31, 1999, during the civil war which left 200,000 dead, according to official figures.
A controversial writer in Algeria
If in France, Kamel Daoud is praised, in Algeria, the writer also columnist for The Point is seen as someone who betrayed the Palestinian cause, sacred to Algerians, in order to make a career in France. Many consider that the Goncourt was a political reward, not a literary one.
With this new controversy, the gap between Karim Daoud and many Algerians active on social networks has widened. “I remind you that in this affair, the first victim of terrorism (and the one who should have our solidarity and support) is Saâda, the only survivor of a massacre, left for dead”writes Abdellah Benadouda, an activist, on Facebook.
The feminist Hanane Trinel, for her part, deplored an affair which “risks breaking the already fragile trust between women and health professionals”. “There has been so much progress in terms of awareness of the need for psychological follow-up for women victims of violence in Algeria, this abuse risks harming this progress”she wrote on Facebook.
