« Bonimenteur », “mythomaniac”, “plagiarism award”… This is how the program “Hebdo show Algeria”, broadcast by the Algerian public channel Al24, described the novel Houris and its author, Kamel Daoud, Saturday November 16. That same day, the Algiers International Book Fair (SILA) closed its doors without having hosted any of the books by the winner of the very recent Goncourt Prize.
Less than two weeks after the first award of the prestigious award to an Algerian writer, the absence was notable in this place which provides international influence to Algerian cultural life.
Filing of two complaints against Kamel Daoud
This void contrasts with the place occupied by the novel Houris in the debates in Algiers, increased tenfold on Wednesday November 20 with the announcement of the filing of two complaints against Kamel Daoud. One comes from a survivor of a massacre during the civil war: Saâda Arbane, 31 years old and survivor of an attempted throat slitting like the narrator of Houris, accuses the writer of having revealed his story without his consent.
Through her lawyer, Fatima Benbraham, during a well-attended press conference on Thursday, November 21, in a palace in Algiers, she clarified that she recognized elements of her life in the crowned novel: her living room. hairstyle in Oran, his tattoos, his cannula, which would be “the only one in Algeria”or even her relationship with her adoptive mother or her desire to have an abortion. Saâda Arbane says she confided all this information in 2015 to her psychiatrist, who has since become the wife of Kamel Daoud.
The other complaint comes from the National Organization of Victims of Terrorism. Filed, like the first, by Fatima Benbraham, she invokes “ the defamation of victims of terrorism » as well as a “violation of the law on national reconciliation”. A reference to the “Charter for Peace and National Reconciliation”, adopted in 2005 to end the Black Decade, those bloody years of clashes between Islamists and the government which left between 150,000 and 200,000 dead and thousands missing. between 1992 and 2002.
This text allowed thousands of Islamist terrorists to lay down their arms in return for “integration” into society. “The victims of terrorism have agreed not to prosecute these people, the main thing being the return to stability in the country”recalled Fatima Benbraham.
In question, the memory of the black decade
France, of which he also has nationality, applauds Kamel Daoud from its Goncourt. But in Algeria, it began to be the subject of a violent controversy, sometimes close to lynching, even before the announcement of the two complaints – filed when the novel was released at the end of August, but now revealed. so that it is not said that we wanted to disrupt the author's nomination for the prize »said the lawyer. As early as October, the organizers of the Book Fair had informed its publisher, Gallimard, that he was unwelcome there.
At the very least, Kamel Daoud embarrasses the Algerian regime, notably for his treatment of the black decade in Houris. « The black decade is the sequence on which there is not yet a historical account or even an analysis sufficiently audible for everyone, deciphers the historian specializing in the Maghreb Karima Dirèche. The only narrative authorized today is that of the State, which boils down to the expression of “national tragedy”a way of presenting an inevitability without contextualizing or sharing or separating responsibilities. »
By making a victim speak, Kamel Daoud violates an article of the Charter punishable by imprisonment “anyone who, through his statements, writings or any other act, uses or instrumentalizes the wounds of the national tragedy”. The writer cannot ignore it, quoting it in the preamble to his novel… But other authors, in recent years, have also written stories relating to the period, published and distributed without obstacle in Algeria.
«The problem with Kamel Daoud is rather his frontal approach and the very aggressive promotion around his novel, presented as that of a dissident columnist, testifies an Algerian editor on condition of anonymity. Enough to drive the regime crazy. » A diet of which “no one is ignorant of nature”, recalled Gallimard by denouncing, Monday November 18, the “violent defamatory campaigns orchestrated (against the writer) by certain media close to him”.
A controversy that prevents any literary debate
Kamel Daoud can also irritate part of society. “He is as appreciated as he is hated, continues historian Karima Dirèche. Many are angry with him for not having joined the Hirak (youth uprising between 2019 and 2021, editor's note), which nevertheless showed another Algeria. Also, he is criticized for not condemning the war in Gaza firmly enough. The Algerians understand his positions as a speech to please France. But nothing, of course, justifies the violence to which he is subjected. » Requested by The CrossKamel Daoud did not respond to our request.
The charge he is subjected to stifles any possibility of a properly literary debate around Houris. “This book is an aesthetic shock, and no one talks about that”regrets a publisher in Algiers. It also deprives Algeria of an opportunity for catharsis provided by the novel, as historian Karima Dirèche regrets: “It was the time to address this major collective trauma and it is a dismaying political and media fiasco. »
Should we see a link with what became “the Daoud affair”? Thursday, November 21, several sources confirmed that they had not received any news from the Algerian author Boualem Sansal, also published by Gallimard, since his arrival on Saturday, November 16 in Algiers.
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