An Algerian woman has sued the winner of France’s biggest book prize, claiming he based his story on her, using confidential information from when she was previously his psychiatrist wife’s patient.
Kamel Daoud was awarded the Goncourt prize earlier this month for his novel Houris, a searing account of Algeria’s 1990s civil war in which up to 200 000 people were killed.
But a woman who survived one of the massacres has appeared on Algerian television alleging that the book’s heroine – named Fajr – is based on her own personal story.
As a girl, Saada Arbane had her throat cut in an Islamist militant attack that wiped out most of her family, and now communicates through a speaking tube. In the book, Fajr has suffered the same fate.
Arbane said that from 2015, she had several psychiatric sessions with Daoud’s future wife, Aicha Dahdouh.
BBC reports that she has now accused the couple of using her story without her consent.
She said many details in the heroine’s life – “her speaking tube, her scars, her tattoos, her hairdresser” – came directly from what she told the psychiatrist.
Arbane alleged she had answered an invitation to meet Daoud three years ago, but had refused when he asked if he could base his book on her story.
Two lawsuits have now been filed against Daoud and his wife. One cites rules on medical confidentiality. The second cites a law enacted after the end of the civil war which makes it a crime to “instrumentalise the wounds of the national tragedy”.
This “reconciliation” law greatly restricts the right to publish or speak publicly on the civil war, and is the reason why Daoud’s book has been proscribed in his home country and why his French publisher Gallimard was banned from the recent Algiers book fair.
Daoud, who moved to Paris in 2020 and took French nationality, is the first Algerian to win the main Goncourt prize. He has yet to react to the lawsuit.
BBC article – Patient sues Algerian author over claims he used her in novel (Open access)