The 2024 Goncourt Prize awarded to Kamel Daoud for “Houris”

The novelist won against Gaël Faye, Hélène Gaudy and Sandrine Collette.

He was one of the big favorites for the prize. The Franco-Algerian writer, 54, receives the 2024 Goncourt Prize for his novel “Houris” (Gallimard), a lyrical and violent text about the dark decade in Algeria. The announcement was made shortly before 1 p.m., from the lounges of the Drouant restaurant in Paris. He won against Sandrine Collette for “Madelaine avant l’aube” (JC Lattès), Gaël Faye for “Jacaranda” (Grasset) and Hélène Gaudy for “Archipels” (L’Olivier). He succeeds Jean-Baptiste Andréa, consecrated in 2023 for “Watch over her” (The Iconoclast).

Kamel Daoud paid tribute to France, “a country that protects writers” and he “gives you the freedom to write”. “I know that we like to do “French bashing” but for me, this country is a welcoming country for writers, for writing and all that which comes from elsewhere”he declared from the Goncourt salon in Paris. “We always need three things to write: a table, a chair and a country. I have all three”he added.

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“Houris” is a literary monument to the Algerian civil war of the 1990s. The novel could not be exported to Algeria, let alone translated into Arabic. As the author writes in his novel, Algerian law prohibits any mention in a book of the bloody events of the “black decade”, the civil war between the government and the Islamists between 1992 and 2002.

Son of a gendarme, Kamel Daoud was born in Mostaganem (north-west) in June 1970, the eldest of six children. He was raised by his grandparents in a village where he became the imam as a teenager, rubbing shoulders with Islamists, before moving away from religion. The only one of his siblings to study literature, he turned to journalism, first at “Détective”, the Algerian version of the news magazine, then in a major French-speaking newspaper, “le Quotidien d'Oran”. . His reputation for integrity comes from this period, then from articles and columns where he bluntly denounced everything that is eating away at Algerian society: corruption, religious hypocrisy, neglect of power, violence, archaisms, inequalities. Father of two children, he stopped journalism in 2016, in favor of literature.

Kamel Daoud made himself known with “Meursault, contre-investigation”. Released in France in 3,000 copies in May 2014, this rereading of the plot of “The Stranger” by Albert Camus will be one of the literary sensations of the year, with more than 100,000 copies sold. A finalist for the Goncourt prize, the work won the Goncourt for first novel, among others.

Please note: the Goncourt Academy is now made up of Philippe Claudel (president), Christine Angot, Pierre Assouline, Tahar Ben Jelloun, Pascal Bruckner, Françoise Chandernagor, Paule Constant (honorary member), Didier Decoin, Camille Laurens and Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt.