The writer Kamel Daoud won the Goncourt, the most prestigious French literary prize, on Monday for “Houris”, a fiction about the massacres of the “black decade” in Algeria, between 1992 and 2002, which is banned in the country.
“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”, praised 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.
After the novel “Veiller sur elle” by Jean-Baptiste Andrea, awarded last year, the Académie Goncourt has chosen a more political fiction and “crowns a book where lyricism competes with tragedy”.
“Houris” (Gallimard) “gives voice to the suffering linked to a dark period in Algeria, that of women in particular. This novel shows how literature, in its high freedom of auscultation of reality, its emotional density, traces, alongside the historical story of a people, another path of memory”, greeted Philippe Claudel, head of the Goncourt jury.
– “Signal fort” –
“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 slit her throat on December 31, 1999.
Choosing a woman as narrator, 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 her village.
In an already tense diplomatic context between France and Algeria, Gallimard was asked not to go to the Algiers International Book Fair, from November 6 to 16, a decision which caused quite a stir.
“Currently, with what is happening all over the world, highlighting a writer, a piece of writing, on war, with such issues, is something admirable,” noted Kamel Daoud, thanking the Goncourt who chose him in the first round, by six votes.
“Knowing what writers experience on the other side of the wall of our democracies, it is a strong signal for all the people who are tempted by this adventure, that of writing and publishing, and of reading too,” said – he again underlined.
Its publisher Antoine Gallimard praised “the political and civil role” taken on by the author. “I am amazed by this strength he has, this calm and the words he chooses,” he assured AFP.
– 30 years later –
Kamel Daoud was in the running against Gaël Faye, ultimately winner of the Renaudot for his second novel “Jacaranda”, a best-seller, and two lesser-known authors: Sandrine Collette and Hélène Gaudy.
Also present in Drouant, the Franco-Rwandan writer and singer spoke of resonances between his novel and Goncourt: “+Houris+ and +Jacaranda+, these are books which speak of the 1990s, they are also conflicts (.. .) So were the 30 years which separate us from the event a necessary time to be able, as writers, (…) to put words to this violence which happened?
“With their voices, our French language says beauty, tragedy, the universal even better,” commented President Emmanuel Macron on X.
Beyond the pride of adding one's name to the list, the Goncourt Prize is an economic issue. He is rewarded with a check for ten euros, which the winners traditionally choose to frame. But above all, it makes it possible to sell hundreds of thousands of copies of a book that many readers will be curious to discover or offer, and it opens the way to numerous translations throughout the world.
For “Houris”, around fifteen were already “envisaged”, indicated Antoine Gallimard. Now this figure “will surely double”.
