The winner of the Goncourt, as the prize is called, is likely to enter the pantheon of world literature, joining a lineage of writers that includes Marcel Proust and Simone de Beauvoir. The prize is also a financial boon for authors. As the biggest award in French literature, the Goncourt means a prime spot in storefronts, foreign rights, prestige. By one estimate, winning the Goncourt means nearly €1m of sales in the weeks that follow.

In November 2024, the Académie Goncourt gave the prize to a novel by Kamel Daoud, a celebrated Algerian writer living in France. His victory came at a tense moment for France and its former colony. The relationship, never an easy one, had been strained by the Algerian state’s increasing political repression of its people and French involvement in the dispute between Algeria and Morocco over Western Sahara. (France has sided with Morocco, which claims sovereignty over the territory; Algeria has supported independence movements there.)

Houris, which was not published in Algeria, tells the story of the war through a 26-year-old woman, Fajr or Aube (Dawn), who, as a child, survived a massacre at Had Chekala, a village where a real massacre took place in January 1998. In the novel, terrorists killed Aube’s family and cut her throat with a knife. The attack gave her a large scar across her neck: her “smile”, as she calls it. To breathe, Aube has undergone a tracheostomy, a procedure through which the neck is opened to access the windpipe. She wears a cannula, which she sometimes hides with a scarf. “I always choose a rare and expensive fabric,” she says. But the injuries from the attack mean that, two decades on, her voice is barely audible. For her, the scar is a sign of a history that many want to forget. “I am the true trace, the most solid of signs of everything we lived through for 10 years in Algeria,” she says.

Eleven days after the Goncourt ceremony, a woman appeared on an Algerian news show. She wore a blue-and-white-striped shirt; her long hair was tied into a bun. This left her neck visible, and attached to it, some breathing apparatus with a cannula. She introduced herself as Saâda Arbane, 30. Daoud, she claimed, had stolen her personal details to make his bestseller. “It’s my personal life, it’s my story. I’m the only one who should determine how it should be made public.” For 25 years, she said, “I’ve hidden my story, I’ve hidden my face. I don’t want people pointing at me.” But, Arbane said, she had confided in her psychiatrist. “I had no filter, no taboos. I told her everything.” Her psychiatrist was Kamel Daoud’s wife.

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