Maryse Condé

Who is Maryse Condé?

Maryse Condé was a Guadeloupean novelist, playwright, and literary scholar, born in Pointe-à-Pitre, Guadeloupe, on 11 February 1934, who became one of the most celebrated French-language writers of her generation. After studying in Paris, she spent many years living and teaching in West Africa during the era of African independence movements, experiences that deeply shaped her writing. Her novels, including the two-part epic Ségou and I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem, explore slavery, colonialism, and the African diaspora with unflinching honesty and a refusal to romanticize any side of history. She later became a professor of French and Francophone literature at Columbia University in New York, where she trained generations of students before retiring as professor emerita. Over her long career she received numerous honors, including the Grand Prix Littéraire de la Femme, the Prix de l'Académie française, the Prix Carbet de la Caraïbe, and the New Academy Prize in Literature in 2018, an alternative award created the year the Nobel Prize in Literature was not given. She was widely regarded as one of the strongest Caribbean contenders for the Nobel Prize before her death on 2 April 2024.

Sources: Wikipedia, "Maryse Condé" · Britannica, "Maryse Conde" · Columbia University French Department, "Maryse Condé (1934-2024)"