Kamel Daoud Affair: Gallimard Denounces the "Forced Parallels" Between "Houris" and the Life of His Accuser

Gallimard denounced this Tuesday, May 13, the "forced or inaccurate parallels" between the plot of the book "Houris" by the Franco-Algerian writer Kamel Daoud, winner of the 2024 Prix Goncourt, and the life of Saâda Arbane, an Algerian woman who accuses him of having stolen her tragic story .

"The forced or inaccurate parallels publicly claimed (whether it be tattoos, a neighborhood, a beach or a high school in Oran or even an abortion...) actually reflect a distortion of the story of the book and cannot transform Houris into a biography or auto-fiction," the publisher stated in a press release.

This "work of imagination" is based on "a plot", "characters" and "events borrowed from the life of Kamel Daoud and from known historical and criminal facts", Gallimard maintains.

"These sources of inspiration, specific to any novelist, are free in France, according to more than centuries-old jurisprudence, and do not fall within the domain of private life," it was added.

Targeted by two international arrest warrants issued by Algeria, a complaint and a summons in France, Kamel Daoud denounced on Monday "a form of judicial persecution" to the newspaper Le Figaro.

His lawyer, Jacqueline Laffont, drew a parallel with the fate of the Franco-Algerian writer Boualem Sansal, detained in Algiers since November , to AFP on Tuesday.

The lawyer also denounced the "media and legal attacks which, based on a biased account and an inaccurate presentation of the facts, aim to discredit the work of the writer (of her client), the probity of his relatives and the integrity of his work."

"Contrary to what Saâda Arbane maintains, Houris is a work of fiction, based on a work of imagination, literary creation, but also on cross-referencing testimonies and historical facts linked to the Algerian civil war, which Kamel Daoud witnessed and which he covered in his capacity as a journalist," Mr. Laffont added.

The lawyer assured that Saâda Arbane's story had been "made public by her own mother, was already known before the publication of the novel", that she is "unfortunately not the only mutilated survivor of the Algerian civil war (...) nor the only one to have escaped an attempted throat-slitting", and that Houris is not the result of a "violation of medical confidentiality" by Saâda Arbane.

This survivor of a massacre during the dark decade of civil war in Algeria told AFP on Sunday that she wanted "to have real and very serious harm recognized."