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It was predicted to be a winner even before the start of the literary year, and the predictions were confirmed. This Monday, November 4, at Drouant at 12:45 p.m., Philippe Claudel delivered the expected verdict: it is therefore Houris by Kamel Daoud (Gallimard) who wins – in the first round, please! – the 122nd Goncourt Prize. It must be said that this evocation of the Algerian civil war in the 1990s established itself as one of the editorial events of the year, upon its publication in mid-August.
A revenge for Gallimard
Many readers were upset by the voice of Aube who, in fact, no longer has a voice – slaughtered by Islamists, she survived (unlike her family), but lost her vocal cords. Today, she speaks in a haunting monologue to the child she carries within her and whom she does not wish to keep. A girl, she thinks, to whom she wishes to tell the infamous “black decade”. Other characters, other testimonies will be added throughout the pages of Houris – title which evokes, in the terms of Larousse, the “virgin(s) of paradise, promised as wife(s) to believers who are admitted there” in the Quran.
Beyond just literature, the Goncourt jury obviously showed a political signal by crowning the Algerian writer-journalist (naturalized French), aged 54, under the yoke of a fatwa since 2014. A few weeks ago , Gallimard editions had moreover…
