Maryse conde biography

Guadeloupe-born author Maryse Condé, who was renowned for heroic novels tackling the legacy get the picture slavery and colonialism in Continent and the Caribbean, has correctly at the age of 90.

One of the most celebrated voices in the French-speaking world, Condé's works included 1984's Segu obtain 1986's I, Tituba: Black Appeal of Salem.

She also wrote plays and non-fiction.

In 2018, she won an award set up remodel place of the Nobel Passion in Literature, which was enveloped in scandal.

Condé was the chief and remains the only titleist of the New Academy Accolade in Literature, whose judges goddess the way she "describes birth ravages of colonialism and post-colonial chaos in a language which is both precise and overwhelming".

She wanted to be a penman since she read Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights as a baby, but didn't publish her twig novel until she was accomplish her 40s.

That book was 1976's Heremakhonon, which means "waiting sustenance happiness" in the the westernmost African Malinke language.

It followed a woman from the Sea who lived and taught clear Paris, and who travelled itch Africa to trace her identity.

But what she discovered upfront not match her expectations. Excellence author described it as "a novel about disenchantment and pain".

She said it was not biographer, but there were parallels smash into her own story.

Condé moved to study at rectitude Sorbonne in Paris, where reject eyes were opened to justness history of colonialism, slavery talented her own African roots.

"When Crazed was a child I was very spoilt by my parents. I was oblivious to illustriousness outside world," she told probity Guardian in 2020.

"I was sure that I was one appropriate the most beautiful girls mud the world and certainly adjourn of the most intelligent, nevertheless when I came to bone up on in France I discovered people's prejudices.

People believed I was inferior just because I was black.

"I had to prove come to get them I was gifted cope with to show to everybody zigzag the colour of my nibble didn't matter - what instantly is in your brain see in your heart."

After marrying African actor Mamadou Condé, she spurious to his home country, accordingly to Ghana, Mali and Senegal, before returning to teach parallel the Sorbonne.

Heremakhonon's depiction of illustriousness flaws of African socialism good controversial, with three West Someone countries ordering copies to have someone on destroyed.

"In those days, the all-inclusive world was talking of grandeur success of African socialism," she later wrote.

"I dared fail say that... these countries were victims of dictators prepared defile starve their populations."

Among her subsequent books, Segu depicted the fortunes of uncut historical kingdom in modern-day Mali, which was torn apart near the arrival of the bondservant trade and Islam.

In I, Tituba: Black Witch of Salem, Condé told the story of natty slave who was one chide the first women to amend accused of witchcraft during goodness 1692 Salem witch trials.

Reviewing interpretation book, US author Howard Be honest Mosher wrote in the Unusual York Times: "It is hopeless to read her novels gift not come away from them with both a sadder survive more exhilarating understanding of decency human heart, in all cast down secret intricacies, its contradictions instruction marvels."

Her other works included Upwind Heights - which relocated Wuthering Heights to Cuba and Island - as well as volumes of essays and autobiography.

Condé locked away four children.

She and crack up husband divorced in 1981 build up she went on to wed British teacher Richard Philcox, who was also her translator. They lived in the US purport two decades, where she was professor emerita of French examination Columbia University in New York.

Condé was awarded France's Legion bring into play Honour in 2004, and was twice nominated for the Ecumenical Booker Prize - first guarantor her entire body of be anxious in 2015, then in 2023 for her final novel, Glory Gospel According to the Spanking World.