Kamel Daoud announces having been sentenced to three years in prison in Algeria for his novel Houris

New skirmish in the cultural war that the Algerian regime is waging against France. Kamel Daoud announced on X that he had been sentenced by the Algerian courts to three years in prison and a fine of five million Algerian dinars for his novel Houris (Gallimard, 2024). This work, which won the Goncourt Prize for the Franco-Algerian writer in 2024, tells the story of Aube, a young Algerian hairdresser who survived the Black Decade (1991-2002), this Algerian civil war taboo for the Algiers regime.

Kamel Daoud indicates having been convicted “in application of the Charter for Peace and National Reconciliation”a text which, according to the author, “represses public mention of the civil war”. For ten years, Algeria was the scene of bloody clashes between the state and the Islamists. “Ten years of war, nearly 200,000 deaths according to estimates, thousands of amnestied terrorists… and only one culprit: a writer”underlines the author on X. Boualem Sansal’s friend, who now lives in France, should not be worried by this conviction.