WINDWARD HEIGHTS
Deemed the “grand dame” of Caribbean literature, Maryse Condé was largely sheltered by her Francophile parents during her upbringing in Guadeloupe. While studying in Paris aged 16, she had her first brushes with racism and learned of colonial oppression through the novel La Rue Cases-Nègres. Politically galvanised, she moved to Africa, soaked in her history, and took up writing. Her most acclaimed novel was Segu, which addressed the slave trade, and she was floated as a potential Nobel laureate. She did receive the New Academy Prize in Literature in 2018, a one-off gong set up in response to the Nobel Prize in Literature’s scandal-engulfed delay that year. She was 90 and unique for A la vie, a la mort.
Maryse Condé
11 February 1934 – 2 April 2024, aged 90
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