Maryse Conde was a novelist, critic, and advocate for the French-Caribbean diaspora from Guadeloupe at the age of ninety. Conde is known for her novels Desirada, Segu, and Crossing the Mangroves. She was considered a strong contender for the 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature, but the Swedish Academy postponed the award due to a rape scandal.
French President Emmanuel Macron posted on X formerly known as Twitter, “A literary giant, Maryse Conde paints a picture of sorrow and hope, from Guadaloupe to Africa, from the Caribbean to Provence. In a language of struggle and splendor, unique and universal.”
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Conde’s writing “describes the ravages of colonialism, and the post-colonial chaos in a language which is both precise and overwhelming,” according to the New Academy at the time.
Conde’s best-selling epic “Segu” from 1984 and its follow-up “Children of Segu” (1985) garnered her praise on a global scale. These works follow a family at the Mali royal court as they navigate the arrival of Islam and later Christianity, the slave trade, and slavery in Brazil over the course of many generations.
After Segu garnered Conde several honors, including a Fulbright fellowship, she began teaching literature at the Sorbonne in Paris, as well as at Columbia University in New York and other American colleges.
Later books, such as “I, Tituba: Black Witch of Salem” and “The Beautiful Creole,” examined feminism, racial issues, and the difficulties faced by the Black Caribbean diaspora in the West.
She was born in Boucolon, Pointe-a-Pitre, into what she subsequently called “an embryonic black bourgeoisie” family; her father established a bank, while her mother operated her own schools for girls. In 1958, she wed Guinean actor Mamadou Conde, with whom she had four children before their divorce in 1969.
She wed Richard Philcox, an English translator, in the year 1982.
Philcox informed Agence France-Presse on Tuesday that she passed away at a hospital in Apt, southern France, on April 1, 2024, at night.
Conde, according to French Foreign Trade and Language Minister Franck Riester, was a prominent figure in French theater and literature.
He stated, quoting her “I, Tituba” on X: “The dead only die if they die in our hearts”.
