atmane tazaghart

No one disputes Kamel Daoud’s artistic talent, his biting pen – he is also recognized as one of the best journalists of his generation – and his literary style, which some compare to Céline. And even if his second novel, “Zabor ou Les psaumes” (Actes Sud, 2017), disappointed, “Houris” (Gallimard, August 2024), for which he just won the Goncourt, has been unanimously praised by critics. An absolute masterpiece in which lyricism subdues tragedy, and political courage rivals the beauty and strength of style.

And yet, the Goncourt awarded to Kamel Daoud has unleashed torrents of hatred against him, especially in his homeland, Algeria!

Devoid of any literary basis, the attacks against him stem from various motives. Beyond petty jealousies and ego clashes, which are a staple of Algeria’s cultural life, there are political vendettas aimed at tarnishing his book to punish him for his critical- and especially clear-sighted – positions on the Palestinian cause (and its manipulation by despotic Arab regimes to control and lull the masses) and his fierce opposition to Islamism and advocacy for secular and humanistic values. This campaign is symptomatic of a “narcissistic wound” that weighs on the collective memory of the “new Algeria,” born after the years of Islamist terrorism (1990–2000).

In the lives of peoples, there are post-traumatic periods, of varying lengths, during which a kind of “voluntary amnesia” sets in, making any duty to remember impossible.

In a conversation that left a strong impression on me with my friend and colleague Jean-Paul Mari, following the release of his excellent “Il faut abattre la lune” (Nil Editions, 2001) – re-released in 2003 for the Year of Algeria in France under the title “La nuit algérienne” – the author of “Oublier la nuit” explained that, as a young student and then journalist in the 1970s and 1980s, he tried in vain to draw attention to the painful issue of torture during the Algerian War.

Testimonies were piling up, archives were being opened, researchers were working on the subject, but everyone looked away. Everything that could be said or written about it was, at the time, inaudible. Jean-Paul Mari describes this type of denial as “post-traumatic amnesia.” It lasts only a certain period, but as long as it persists, every dissonant voice hits a wall of silence.

The same is true of the horrors and massacres of Algeria’s “black decade,” which are central to Kamel Daoud’s Goncourt-winning novel of 2024. Like Aube, the heroine of “Houris,” Algerians are mute on the subject. Not only because an absurd law prohibits recalling the torments of this “national tragedy,” but also – and above all – because the trauma is still so fresh that Algerians prefer amnesia (real? feigned? desired?) over the necessary “duty of remembrance.”

And it is precisely because they know they cannot face the mirror Kamel Daoud holds up to them that many of his compatriots attack him with such excess and vehemence!