Maryse Condé

The youngest of eight children, Maryse Condé was born in Guadeloupe, a French-governed string of islands in the Caribbean. Condé’s parents were academics, and she quickly followed in their footsteps: after getting her degree in comparative literature at the Sorbonne in Paris, she began to teach at universities the world over, from West Africa to the Upper West Side. Condé specializes in post-colonial history and theory, with a particular focus on women’s place within the African diaspora. Her novels explore much of the same intellectual territory from a fictional perspective; her most important work includes the 1987 book Segu, about the rise of the slave trade in West Africa, and Heremakhonon, her debut, which follows a Caribbean woman who seeks to trace her roots back to Africa. Condé retired from teaching in 2005 and now lives with her second husband Richard Wilcox (who is also the English-language translator for many of her books). For her contribution to world literature, she has won the Prix Littéraire de la Femme (1986), the Prix de l’Académie Française (1988), the Prix Carbet de la Carïbe (1997), and the New Academy Prize in Literature (2018).