Complaints filed in Algeria over prizewinning book

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Complaints filed in Algeria over prizewinning book

6:27 CAT | 21 Nov 2024

File photo: AFP

Two complaints have been filed in Algeria against author Kamel Daoud and his therapist wife, accusing them of using a patient’s story as the basis for his prizewinning novel, the plaintiffs’ lawyer said Wednesday.

The novel “Houris” — which won France’s prestigious Goncourt prize this month but is banned in Algeria — tells the story of a woman who loses her voice when an Islamist cuts her throat as she witnesses her family being massacred during Algeria’s 1990s civil war.

A survivor of a massacre during that period, Saada Arbane, has since alleged on Algerian TV with the use of a speech aid that the character is based on her experiences, which she disclosed during treatment to a therapist who is now Daoud’s wife.

“Right after the publication of the book, we filed two complaints against Kamel Daoud and his wife Aicha Dehdouh, the psychiatrist who treated the victim,” lawyer Fatima Benbraham told AFP, adding the cases had been lodged with the court in Oran, where Daoud and his wife live in Algeria.

“The first complaint was filed on behalf of the National Organisation of Victims of Terrorism” and “the second on behalf of the victim”, Benbraham said.

They were first lodged in August, she added, soon after the novel’s release and well before Franco-Algerian Daoud won the Goncourt.

“We did not want to talk about it, so it wouldn’t be said that we wanted to disrupt the author’s nomination for the prize,” Benbraham said.
The complaints, she said, centre on “the violation of medical confidentiality… as well as the defamation of victims of terrorism and the violation of the law on national reconciliation”, which forbids publications regarding the period of the civil war between 1992 and 2002.

The novel’s publisher, Gallimard, has defended Daoud and his wife, saying they were the victims of orchestrated attacks following the banning of the book in Algeria.

Daoud, who used to work as a journalist and columnist in Algeria, has stirred controversy with his analyses of society in Algeria and elsewhere in the Arab world in French and international media.

Source: AFP