In Algeria, Prix Goncourt is accused of having revealed and used the story of a patient of his wife Aicha Dehdouh, psychiatrist, in his novel Houris published by Gallimard.
Two complaints were filed in Algeria against the Franco-Algerian author Kamel Daoud, Prix Goncourt 2024, and his psychiatrist’s wife, accusing them of having revealed and used the story of a patient for the writing of the novel HourisAFP learned from the plaintiffs’ lawyer.
“As soon as the book was published, we filed two complaints against Kamel Daoud and his wife Aicha Dehdouh, the psychiatrist who treated the victim. Saâda Arbane », explained lawyer Fatima Benbraham, specifying that she had taken the matter to the court of Oran (west), place of residence of the writer and his wife in Algeria. Saâda Arbane, survivor of a massacre during the civil war in Algeria in the 1990s, spoke on an Algerian channel accusing the author of having revealed her story in the novel without her authorization.
“The first complaint was filed on behalf of the National Organization of Victims of Terrorism” et “the second in the name of the victim”specified Me Benbraham, assuring that their deposit dates back to August, “a few days after the book was published”and well before the award of the Prix Goncourt to the novel at the beginning of November. “We did not want to talk about it, so that it would not be said that we wanted to disrupt the author’s nomination for the prize,” she declared.
According to this well-known lawyer in Algeria, the complaints relate to “the violation of medical confidentiality, since the doctor (the wife of Mr. Daoud, Editor’s note) handed over the entire file of her patient to her husband, as well as on the defamation of victims of terrorism and the violation of the law on national reconciliation”which prohibits any publication on the period of the civil war between 1992 and 2002.