Kamel Daoud arrives for his interview in Berlin in a black limousine, accompanied by two men dressed in black who never leave his side. The Algerian writer, who now lives in France, is under police protection: His latest book not only won him France's most prestigious literary prize, the Prix Goncourt — it has also put him in grave danger.

"Houris," which has now appeared in German, is a novel that recounts the massacres and torture that took place during the Algerian civil war. Not only is it taboo to discuss the war in Algeria, but in 2005 a law was passed forbidding it — ostensibly to promote "national reconciliation."

"When you write a novel like this, you make enemies of Islamists, the regime and even intellectuals from the extreme left-wing decolonial movement," said Daoud. "You don't please anyone. A 17-year-old idiot with something to prove can be as much of a threat as the regime."

"Houris" has been banned in Algeria — in fact, all of Daoud's books have been removed from stores. Algerian authorities have issued two international arrest warrants against him, but the global police organization Interpol did not accept them.

Additionally, a woman has filed a civil lawsuit against the writer, accusing him of basing the central character on her own story without permission. Daoud claims this is defamation, and alleges that the legal action was orchestrated by the regime.

While the war of liberation against French colonial rule (1954-62) still shapes Algerian identity today, the government in Algiers is doing everything in its power to ensure people forget the civil war of the 1990s.

At that time, the national army and Islamist terrorist groups engaged in bloody fighting. Since then, much has remained in the dark, even the number of fatalities, which is usually estimated at around 200,000. As for the suffering of individual victims, this is rarely mentioned.

Silence about victims and perpetrators 

Daoud wrote about the war as a reporter. "But there are things you can't write about, things that stay in your head. When you write a report about a massacre with 400 victims, 400 is just a number. But how do you convey the feeling of stepping over dead bodies?" he said.

The novel "Houris" presents a different perspective. The narrator is a young woman who survived a massacre as a little girl. Her throat was cut, but she was saved.

Daoud was adamant that his novel's main protagonist should be a woman, since they are the ones who pay the highest price in war.

"Men are forgiven," he told DW. "But what about women who were kidnapped by Islamists when they were 13 or 14 years old, who were raped and became pregnant? After the war, the men came back, but the women came back with their children. And no one forgives them for that."

The central character, Aube, does not get pregnant until after the war. But people still can't forgive her. Algerian society wants to erase all memories of what it calls the "Black Decade," and sees the visible scar on Aube's neck as a provocation.

'I am a feminist'

The fragile yet defiant young woman is only able to breathe through a tube in her throat. In an inner monologue, Aube talks to her unborn child about the atrocity itself and what happened afterwards.

Meanwhile, she runs a beauty salon right across the road from a mosque. It's a small slice of freedom where her female clients can enjoy beauty treatments as the neighboring imam delivers misogynistic sermons to their husbands.

The novel's title, "Houris," alludes to the virgins said to await righteous male Muslims in paradise.

Aube calls her unborn child "My Houri," but questions whether the child should even be allowed to live: The past is too painful, the present too hostile — especially for women.

"As everyone knows, I am a feminist," said Daoud, explaining why his novel paints a picture of an oppressive Islamicist patriarchy.

Resisting imprisonment at home

Shortly after "Houris" was published in France in 2024, Daoud was accused of being Islamophobic and playing into the hands of right-wing extremists.

He vehemently rejects these accusations: "Islamophobia is a Western disease, not mine," he said. "I experienced a civil war where I saw Islamists kill. I have the right to raise my voice, and you have no right to silence me."

Daoud's stance is comparable to that of his compatriot author and friend Boualem Sansal, who has also written about the Algerian civil war period and faced censorship while receiving important literary awards — including the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade in 2011.

For many years, Sansal's work has also been critical of both Islamist violence and the Algerian regime. Like Daoud, he recently became a French citizen. But he was arrested on entering Algeria in late 2024 and has since been sentenced to five years in prison.

This is unsettling for Daoud — not just because Sansal is a friend, but also because of the threat to his own safety.

"If the regime has managed to issue two international arrest warrants against me, then they really want me to sit at Boualem Sansal's side," he said.

This article was originally written in German.