More French than Algerian

Only one major Algerian newspaper featured the achievement in a small corner on its front page, and only a handful of his close colleagues congratulated him publicly on social media. For most Algerians, it seems the news barely made a ripple. I can’t say if Kamel Daoud deserves France’s most prestigious literary honor, the Prix Goncourt. I haven’t read his latest book, and like many of my millennial Algerian peers, I probably won’t. Like the 1968 French-Algerian immigration accords or Macron’s recent admission of French military culpability in the killing of Larbi Ben M’Hidi, Kamel Daoud seems much more relevant in France than at home.

Why such indifference for such a talented writer?

I remember not wanting to like Daoud before I even met him. I had sparingly read some of his columns and almost always found his perspectives embarrassingly exaggerated and one-dimensional.

In a 2016 New York Times article titled “The Sexual Misery of the Arab World,” he wrote: “During the summer in Algeria, brigades of Salafists and local youths, stirred by the speeches of radical imams and Islamist TV preachers, go out to monitor women’s bodies, especially at the beach. The police hound couples, even married ones, in public spaces. Gardens are off-limits to strolling lovers. Benches are sawed in half to prevent people from sitting close together.”

To me, the Algeria he describes is more a collage of isolated incidents (which end up being roundly condemned and ridiculed), tailored to please a right-wing audience in the West, than it is an accurate depiction of our everyday lives.

Yet I never fully formulated my own opinion until I met the man in March 2022. I was working as a fixer for a Japanese journalist who was flying to Algeria to interview Daoud about his next book. We met at a four-star hotel overlooking the Mediterranean in Oran. Daoud was punctual, taller than I’d expected, and polite. He walked rapidly with a duck-toed gait. We all shook hands, sat down, and ordered coffee and sparkling water before beginning the interview.

We were interrupted by an impeccably dressed lady who resembled one of my aunts.  “I’m sorry for interrupting. I just wanted to say that I don’t like when people attack you, and that I am firmly on your side. Even though I don’t read a lot, I am behind you. Keep on,” she said, almost emotionally.

A few minutes later, our interview was interrupted again by a man in the lobby.  “I just wanted to say bravo for everything that you do. Good luck,” he said, while walking by. I remember a sentiment of surprise washing over me. Not just because of the genuine emotion of his fans, but because I was also taking a liking to the man. He was refreshingly insightful.

The interview focused on the COVID-19 pandemic in Algeria and how we could draw parallels between our era and Albert Camus’s The Plague, which was also set in Oran. When asked about his main observations during the lockdown period, Daoud said that he “rediscovered silence. “Silence allows you to hear yourself and the world. Contrary to what we think, silence and the night are no longer naturally linked. We needed to be confined to rediscover it.”

When asked about one of the principal dilemmas in Camus’s novel, the idea of staying in a dangerous place or leaving loved ones behind, Daoud also had a thoughtful answer. “It’s a normal decision for me to live in Algeria, because I am free to travel. When you are free, you see your life differently. People that leave do it because they don’t have a choice. Take a look at this sea.” He pointed to the Mediterranean over his shoulder. “For a tourist the view is relaxing, but when you can’t travel across, it is a wall.”

After the interview, Daoud accompanied us for a stroll in the city and showed us where Camus stayed in Oran. He was even kind enough to invite us into his home for further discussion. But as our conversation turned to Algerian society, the Daoud of his columns reemerged, with analysis reduced to issues of sexual frustration and religious repression.

Therein lies the paradoxical duality of Daoud.

While at the hotel, I found him capable of delivering profound and layered observations about abstract notions such as “silence” and providing a human perspective on migration. Yet when it came to dissecting Algerian society, he repeatedly used an impossibly simplistic and fixed lens, incapable of zooming in or out to include or exclude a variety of other factors.

I could not help but wonder if the right-wing French political and cultural elite appreciates him precisely for this reason—he voices views that echo their own assumptions and prejudices about the Algerian working class, and they need an Algerian to say out loud what they think.

After leaving Oran on a cordial note, I thought about Daoud some more. I remember discussing him with friends and asking, “How can someone so intelligent view things so simply? Does he actually believe what he writes, or is he being disingenuous for political and economic purposes? And which is worse?”

My initial hesitation called back to an anecdote he told us in Oran about his time as a journalist for Le Quotidien d’Oran during the Algerian civil war. He was reporting on an alleged Armed Islamic Group (GIA) massacre near Relizane, and he vividly recounted running up the hill towards the village and seeing people streaming past in the opposite direction. At the crime scene he found no intact bodies, just strewn body parts. Living through such experiences can so revolt you that you become unwilling to think about concepts such as Islamism in a nuanced manner.

Still, the unanimous response from friends was that Daoud knew exactly what he was doing by choosing to represent Algeria in a way that serves the racist right wing, and that he was doing it to curry favors and push a political agenda. Over time, I came to agree with that assessment.

The first signs to support that conclusion came during the Algerian Hirak protests, when Daoud unfairly misrepresented the scope of the protests to try and legitimize the Tebboune government. He was subsequently rewarded with exclusive access to the president. As a columnist for Le Point, he continued his work unimpeded by the Algerian authorities, unlike other objective journalists accused of foreign influence. And due to his reluctance to criticize France’s colonial legacy in Algeria, he found himself invited to gatherings at the French embassy and even dining with President Macron in Algiers. Eventually, he was awarded French citizenship, solidifying his ties to France.

But what truly shifted my view of Daoud came in October 2023 with his article “Letter to an Unknown Israeli.” In it, he framed Algerian support for the Palestinian cause as a simplistic resentment, saying, “I was educated not to know the Jew, the Israeli, because you were the enemy of God, of Palestine, of justice, of the prophet and of almost everything, I resented you and I dreamed somewhere of your disappearance.”

For an Algerian intellectual to so grossly misrepresent the concept of settler colonialism, a concept that we all know too well, can be nothing else but intentional.

So congratulations to Daoud on the Prix Goncourt—it will no doubt find an appreciative audience. But until he begins to approach Algerian society with something more than disdain, his recognition will remain more a French accomplishment than an Algerian one.

This article was initially published on the Africa is a Country website.