A giant in world literature, having been awarded the “alternative Nobel Prize” in 2018, Maryse Condé left this world on the night of April 1. Born in 1934 in Guadeloupe, she produced an extensive body of work, including sagas, novels, plays, essays, children’s stories and even cooking recipes.
Her works frequently offered the reader an opportunity to travel across the Atlantic, making connections between Africa, America and Europe. Under her pen, it was not only geography that took shape but history too, as she told those little stories that can get lost amid the bigger ones, whether they touch on the empires of Africa, the period of slavery, the colonial era or the present day.
Standing at the confluence of the works of Aimé Césaire, Edouard Glissant and Frantz Fanon, her corpus has become universal: You can’t fully understand the world without reading Maryse Condé. The flavor of her work can be sweet, full of relish or sometimes bitter − but also powerful. While focusing on history’s marginalized characters, especially women like Tituba, she revealed the hidden strength of these exceptional beings who, under her pen, achieved legendary status.
Guardian figure
Maryse Condé spared no effort in drawing global attention to French and Francophone literature. At Columbia University in the United States, she founded the Center for French and Francophone Studies, which has continued to flourish today. Over the years, she became a guardian figure, a sort of sage to whom then-president Jacques Chirac naturally entrusted the presidency of the National Committee for the Memory and History of Slavery. She published an important report, following which May 10 became the National Day of Remembrance of the Slave Trade, Slavery and their Abolition.
At a time when the French nation is so often divided, Maryse Condé is both a figure involved in and above the fray, a passionate figure who was able to unite, amaze and inspire people all at once.
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