Maryse Condé died at 90

The Guadeloupean writer Maryse Condé, who in thirty works addressed topics such as Africa, slavery, colonialism and postcolonialism, died Monday night at the Apt hospital, in the French department of Vaucluse, as reported by her husband and translator of the narrator, Richard Philcox, according to Afp.

Her longtime editor, Laurent Laffont, said that the narrator suffered “a neurological disease that affected her vision to the point of having to dictate her last novel, The Gospel according to the New World (2023), but she still enjoyed the celebration of her 90th birthday in February, accompanied by family and friends,” reported the Ap agency.

I was smiling, I was happyrecalled Laffont, who otherwise remembered her as a woman of uncommon intensity and generosity. It was a wonderful farewell, a truly great farewell..

There is confusion about his age. Most maintain that he was born in 1937, but his editor claimed that he died at age 90, so he must have been born in 1934.

The French president, Emmanuel Macron, wrote on the social network X: Giant of literature, Maryse Condé has painted a picture of pain and hope, from Guadeloupe to Africa, from the Caribbean to Provence. In a unique and universal language of struggle and splendor. Free.

Condé was one of the most constant candidates for the Nobel Prize in Literature, which she never won. Instead, she received the New Academy Literature Prize in 2018, a citizen initiative that recognized her work when the Swedish Academy delayed the presentation of the highest award in world literature due to a sexual assault scandal within that committee. .

The organizers of the alternative recognition maintained that it was awarded to Condé because In his works, with precise language, he describes the ravages of colonialism and the chaos of postcolonialism..

The French-speaking writer recreated the past from 17th-century New England to contemporary Europe in novels, stories, plays and memoirs. She was almost 40 years old when she published her first novel.

The Mexican Editorial Elefanta translated the novel into Spanish Mangrove crossing of the highway nacida in Pointe-à-Pitre, on the island of Guadalupe. The Conference published a preview of this work on November 24, 2018.

The label spread its condolences on the social network X for the death of Condé, whom it described as a fundamental writer of the Caribbean, the diaspora and postcolonialism in the world. A pioneering intellectual and activist. She lived in Africa, America and Europe.

The Spanish Impedimenta spread through the same medium as the novelist leaves behind an absolutely masterful work, which has always excited us and which has been one of the backbones of this publishing house.

Through the social network, Casa de las Américas and the Booker Prize mourned the death. The first one called her giant of Caribbean letters; Meanwhile, the British award winner recalled that she was shortlisted for the International Booker on two occasions (2015 and 2023).

In The desiredMaryse Condé narrated a genealogy of women who fight heroically to spread their wings and conquer their right to the portion of happiness that is due to all human beingsstated Martha Asunción Alonso, Spanish translator of that novel, winner of the Carbet Caribbean Prize and later published in Impedimenta.

The specialist in the Caribbean author maintained that The fact that in 2001 France finally recognized that slavery had been a crime against humanity has a lot to do with Maryse Condéwho always fought in his literature and in life for the recognition of the unfathomable human diversity as the treasure that it is.”

In 2019 he received the Grand Cross of the National Order of Merit of the Republic of France, which recognized his work, which ”combines fiction, autobiography and essays; “It is anchored in postcolonial and feminist thought,” according to a statement from the government of that country.

Call the great lady of Antillean literature, Condé was influenced by Frantz Fanon, Aimé Césaire and other critics of colonialism. Furthermore, she was a traveler who probed the conflicts between and within Western, African, and Caribbean cultures, as well as the tensions between the desire for liberation and what she considered the trap of terrorism and simplistic radicalization.

The renowned author commented that Reading José Zobel, more than any theoretical speech, opened my eyes. I realized that the environment I belonged to had absolutely nothing to offer and I began to hate it. I had been bleached and whitewashed by a poor imitation of the French children I hung out with..

In the 1960s he moved to Africa, spending much of the next decade in Ghana, Guinea and other newly independent countries.

Condé wrote dozens of books ranging from historical explorations such as Ségou: The earthen wallseven his autobiographical stories of Heart that laughs, heart that cries and the reimagining of works of classical Western literature, such as Wuthering Heights turned into Windward y The scarlet letter you see as I, Tituba, the black witch of Salem.

In an interview included in Yo, Tituba1992, noted: I am just a dreamer, my dreams rest on a historical basis. Being a black person with a certain history behind me, I want to explore that realm and, of course, do it with imagination and intuition. But I am not involved in any kind of academic research..

In his last book he addressed the contemporary parable about a dark-skinned boy in Martinique with gray-green eyes who may or may not be the son of God. Loving others seems to me to be the way, perhaps the only way, to have an impactwrote.