Franco-Algerian writer Kamel Daoud is the target of two international arrest warrants issued by Algerian authorities in connection with the controversy surrounding his novel “Houris”, which won the Goncourt Prize in 2024.
Daoud became the first author of Algerian descent to win the Goncourt Prize – the most prestigious award in French literature.
France has been informed of the two arrest warrants, a spokesperson for the French Foreign Ministry said. “We are following and will continue to follow developments in this situation closely,” said Christophe Lemoine, the spokesperson for the Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs, stressing that France was committed to freedom of expression.
The author, who is a French citizen and resides in France, is accused of having used the story of a survivor of a massacre during the Algerian civil war without her consent – an accusation he denies.
Last November, an Algerian court accepted an initial complaint against the writer and his psychiatrist wife for using the story of a patient in the writing of his novel “Houris”.
Two appeals were lodged against Daoud and his wife, who treated Saâda Arbane.
One complaint came from Arbane, a survivor of a massacre during the civil war in Algeria (1992-2002), who accused the couple of using her story without her consent.
The other is from the National Organisation of Victims of Terrorism.
On learning that these arrest warrants had been issued against him, the writer’s lawyer, Jacqueline Laffont-Haïk, said that Daoud would contest them with Interpol.
“The motives behind these Algerian warrants can only be political and part of a series of procedures aimed at silencing a writer whose latest novel evokes the massacres of the black decade in Algeria,” said Laffont-Haïk.
“Houris” is a dark novel set partly in Oran about Aube, a young woman who has been mute since an Islamist slit her throat on 31 December 1999.
The book is banned in Algeria, as the country prohibits any work evoking this period of civil war. Indeed, “Houris” contravenes an article of the Charter for Peace and National Reconciliation, which prohibits the evocation of the “wounds of the national tragedy” – the expression used to describe the civil war that pitted Islamist groups against the Algerian army from 1992 to 2002, killing 200,000 people and leaving thousands more missing.
Kamel Daoud previously claimed that the story was “public” in Algeria and that his novel “does not recount (the) life” of Saâda Arbane.
“This unfortunate young woman claims that this is her story. While I can understand her tragedy, my answer is clear: it’s completely false,” wrote Daoud in an article for the French publication Le Point last December. “Apart from the apparent wound, there is nothing in common between this woman’s unbearable tragedy and the character Aube. The wound is not unique. Unfortunately, it is shared by many other victims,” continued Daoud, who accused the plaintiff of being “manipulated to achieve an objective: to kill a writer and defame (his) family.”
Daoud’s publisher, Gallimard, has denounced the “violent defamatory campaigns orchestrated (against the writer) by certain media close to a regime whose nature is well known.”
Additional sources • Le Point, AFP
