Kamel Daoud in Paris, December 11, 2024. GEOFFROY VAN DER HASSELT/AFP
French-Algerian writer Kamel Daoud announced on X on Wednesday, April 22, that he was sentenced to three years in prison by an Algerian court for his novel Houris, published in summer 2024 by Gallimard and awarded France's prestigious Goncourt Prize in November.
"A unique event in Algerian history: The verdict from the April 7th, 2026 trial came down on April 21. I have been sentenced to three years in prison and fined 5 million Algerian dinars [over €32,000], under the Charter for Peace and National Reconciliation," he wrote on the social media platform. Daoud added, "The bill punishes public discussion of the civil war. Ten years of war, nearly 200,000 dead by estimates, thousands of terrorists amnestied... And a single culprit: a writer."
His novel is a dark story set partly in Oran, telling the fate of Aube, a young woman left mute since an Islamist militant slit her throat on December 31, 1999. The novel cannot be published in Algeria, as it falls under a law banning all works about the "Black Decade" from 1992 to 2002, which claimed at least 200,000 lives, according to official figures.
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