Kamel Daoud, the Algerian-born author who won France's most prestigious literary award, the Prix Goncourt, has brought international attention to his homeland's deliberately silenced history through his powerful novel "Houris." The book confronts Algeria's civil war period, known as the Black Decade, which the government has legally forbidden citizens from discussing or investigating. Daoud's victory represents not just literary achievement, but an act of defiance against state-imposed amnesia.
The 55-year-old writer spoke candidly about the limitations of language when confronting extreme trauma during a press conference at the French Embassy in Seoul. "We think that simply because we've witnessed something, we can express it. But no. Great pain, great suffering — they impose limits. When you walk through a site of massacre and human flesh sticks to your shoes, what use are grand, weighty words?" Daoud's personal experience covering Algeria's civil war as a 22-year-old journalist deeply influenced his understanding of how societies process collective trauma.
Algeria's civil war, which devastated the country from 1991 to 2002, resulted in approximately 200,000 deaths, with most victims being civilians caught between government forces and Islamist rebels. The conflict's aftermath proved almost as traumatic as the violence itself. In 2006, the Algerian government passed legislation that effectively criminalized any attempt to speak about, research, or commemorate the events of this period. This legal prohibition turned remembrance itself into a criminal act.
"Houris" directly challenges this enforced silence by telling the story through Aube, the sole survivor of a massacre that killed her entire family. The novel's title refers to the celestial maidens promised to pious Muslims in paradise, but Daoud uses the term to honor the women living in the present world. Through Aube's voice, the author attempts what his government never did: to remember, to acknowledge, and to preserve the experiences of those who suffered.
The consequences of Daoud's literary courage have been severe and personal. "Houris" is currently banned in Algeria, and the author has been living in exile in Paris since 2023. Algerian authorities issued two international arrest warrants against him in May, making him a wanted man in his homeland. Fellow writer Boualem Sansal, who spent a year in prison before being released, delivered a chilling warning from Algeria's secret police: even in Paris, Daoud should never assume he was safe.
During his visit to Seoul — marking the first time he had traveled outside Europe since going into exile — Daoud admitted that "a small part of him thought, 'Maybe this time, they'll get me.'" However, he emphasized an important distinction in his relationship with his homeland. "I am not in conflict with my homeland, but rather in conflict with a regime that has stolen my homeland from me," he explained. He expressed confidence that history would remember writers long after dictatorships fall and their enforcers are forgotten.
Daoud's approach to addressing societal trauma differs fundamentally from journalistic or academic treatments. "For me, writing a novel, rather than a journalistic article or an academic thesis, begins with a question for which there is no good answer," he explained. "When I face a contradiction that has no good solution, I write a novel to see how my characters attempt to overcome it." This methodology allowed him to explore impossible moral dilemmas that defy simple resolution.
The central moral conflict in "Houris" revolves around Aube's pregnancy in a society that systematically mistreats women. She wrestles with whether to bring her daughter into a world that hates them or to end the pregnancy. The character repeatedly tells her unborn child, "I will kill you because I love you; if I hated you, I would let you live." This paradox illustrates the impossible choices faced by women in oppressive societies.
Daoud uses his platform to advocate for women's rights across the Arab world, arguing that societies can be judged by how they treat women. "In many Arab countries, we lock away half of our strength. Women are first educated — and then veiled, hidden, married off, confined. How can we ever hope to be prosperous when half of our human potential is annulled?" he asked. "And how can we love life while despising the very beings who give us life?"
The author drew parallels between Algeria and South Korea, noting their shared histories of colonization, civil war, and massacre. However, he stressed that his story should not be interpreted as one of despair. Instead, he presents it as a narrative of passage — showing how people can move from merely surviving trauma to becoming fully alive again. "My hope is that readers take from it something very simple: that life continues after pain, after death," he said.
Daoud made a critical distinction between amnesty and amnesia in his country's approach to its painful past. "A civil war is not like a war against an invader. It is a shameful one — a war against ourselves. We are all, in some way, killers and victims. At a certain point, you do need to find a way to stop the cycle," he acknowledged. "But in Algeria, I think we confused amnesty with forgetting, and these are two very different things."
The author argued that attempts to erase the past ultimately fail because memory finds alternative channels of expression. "In the end, forgetting cannot seal the past away. The country may outlaw acts of remembrance, but the past will always find its way back," he explained. This return occurs through literature, personal testimony, and efforts to preserve the suffering of previous generations from being lost to official silence.
Korean readers can now access "Houris" through a translation that arrived this month, bringing Daoud's message of remembrance to a new audience. The book's international success demonstrates literature's power to transcend borders and governmental censorship. Despite the personal risks he faces, Daoud continues to believe in the transformative power of storytelling and the importance of bearing witness to historical truth.
The novel concludes with a profound insight that Aube discovers: "The dead do not ask us to resemble them." Instead, as Daoud explains, "The dead ask nothing of the sort. They ask us to live — twice, three times, four times if necessary. To live our own lives, and also the life they themselves could not." This message transforms grief into a mandate for living fully, turning survival into a form of honoring those who were lost.
