French-Algerian writer Kamel Daoud wins top French literary prize

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.

The jury needed just one round of voting to awards the coveted prize to Daoud for his novel Houris about what has become known as Algeria's "black decade".

The book, written in French, is banned in Algeria.

Daoud was already known internationally for his 2013 debut novel The Meursault Investigation -- a retelling of Albert Camus' The Stranger from the opposite angle -- for which he won the First Novel category of the Goncourt prize.

The writer, who used to work as a journalist and columnist in Algeria, has stirred controversy with his analyses of society in Algeria

Daoud often comments on issues in Muslim countries, most recently by posting about Iranian authorities arresting a female student on Saturday after she staged a solo protest against harassment by stripping to her underwear outside her university.

The prestigious Goncourt prize usually sparks book sales in the hundreds of thousands for the winning author.

However, the prize money itself amounts to just 10 euros ($11), paid by a cheque that winners usually frame and hang on the wall rather than cash.

"With Houris, the Goncourt Academy has crowned a book in which lyricism duels with tragedy and which gives a voice to the suffering linked to a dark time in Algeria, especially for women," said Goncourt president Philippe Claudel.

With the novel, the author appears to challenge official Algeria's continuing reluctance to address the war that began in January 1992 and killed tens of thousands of people, with some estimates as high as 200,000.

It is illegal in Algerian to publish any investigation into the civil war that began after the government cancelled an election, sparking an armed uprising by fundamentalist guerilla groups.

Publishing Houris was only possible "because I came to France", Daoud told reporters. "Because this is a country that granted me the freedom to write," said the 54-year-old who left his Algerian home city of Oran for France "because of circumstances" and was given citizenship.