Esteemed Guadeloupean author and leading figure in Francophone literature, Maryse Condé, passed away in her sleep on Monday night at the hospital in Apt (Vaucluse), according to her husband Richard Philcox.
Born in Pointe-à-Pitre on February 11, 1934, Condé wrote about Africa, slavery, and the idea of holding multiple Black identities in some 30 published books. Additionally, she spent two decades in New York, USA, and headed a Francophone studies centre at Columbia University.
Condé only began writing at the age of 42, alongside her companion Richard Philcox, who became her translator. In 1976, she published Hérémakhonon, followed by Ségou (1984-1985), a best-seller on the Bambara Empire in 19th century Mali.
She also authored Desiderada and her name has been mulled several times for the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Condé resided in Gordes, a small Provençal village in Vaucluse, southern France. Diagnosed with a neurodegenerative disease, she settled there with her husband in the 1980s. Here, she dictated her last book, L’Evangile du nouveau monde — her rewriting of the New Testament — to a friend.
