A woman has accused the French-Algerian author Kamel Daoud, who was recently awarded the prestigious Goncourt Prize for the novel "Houris", of having stolen her story.
The book deals with the civil war in Algeria in the 1990s, and the woman claims that it tells her personal story – which she claims to have confided in the author's wife, who is a psychologist. However, the publisher Antoine Gallimard is now defending the book, and believes that it has been subjected to defamation campaigns since it was banned in Algeria.
Even though "Houris" is inspired by tragic events that occurred in Algeria during the civil war in the 1990s, its plot, characters, and heroine are entirely fictional, he says.
The author was born in 1970 and made his debut in 2013 with "The Meursault Case", a kind of dialogue with Albert Camus' "The Stranger". This book was also awarded the Goncourt Prize in the category of best debut novel.
"Houris" will be published in Swedish translation by Tranan Publishing next autumn.
