Kamel Daoud in conversation with Anna Luyten

Kamel Daoud (Algeria) is a journalist for Le Quotidien d’Oran, one of Algeria’s leading French-language newspapers. His articles are published worldwide, including in Libération, Le Monde, and The New York Times. Daoud lives and works in Oran, Algeria. His debut novel, The Meursault Investigation, was an instant international success. Houris is his most recent novel and won the prestigious French Prix Goncourt in 2024.
At Crossing Border, he will talk about his novel Houris.

About Houris
The young Algerian woman Aube did not live through the war of independence—but she is not allowed to forget it. The civil war of the 1990s, which she did experience, she is expected to forget. Yet the trauma of that war is etched into her body: a scar on her neck and damaged vocal cords that have left her unable to speak.
She can only tell her story to her unborn daughter. But is she even allowed to keep this child? Can you give life when yours was nearly taken away? In a country where laws exist to punish anyone who speaks of the civil war, Aube decides to return to her native village—where it all began, and where the dead might finally give her an answer.