ALGIERS, Algeria (AP) — As one of the Arab world’s largest book fairs opens in Algeria on Wednesday, there is one conspicuous absence. French-Algerian author Kamel Daoud, who won France’s most prestigious literary award earlier this week, was not invited to this year’s event.

Algerian Kamel Daoud wins the Prix Goncourt for his novel Houris, a searing account of his country’s 1990s conflict.

Daoud was awarded the accolade for a novel based on Algeria’s bloody civil war between Islamist militias and the country’s army in the 1990s. The coveted prize usually catapults writers to fame in France and leads to hundreds of thousands of book sales — though itself is banned in Algeria,

French-Algerian writer Kamel Daoud on Monday won France's top literary prize, the Goncourt, for a novel centred on Algeria's civil war between the government and Islamists in the 1990s, organisers