The New Academy was formed earlier this year in response to the Swedish Academy cancelling the 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature to focus on dealing with the fallout of the scandals that recently have rocked the centuries-old institution.

Maryse Condé will receive her award at a ceremony in Stockholm in December, after which the New Academy intends to dissolve having completed its mission. Maryse Condé writes in French, but several of her books have been translated to English, e.g., Segu, I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem, Crossing the Mangrove, Victoire, My Mother’s Mother, and Windward Heights, which is a retelling of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights. Writing for me is a type of therapy, a way to be safe and sound.” I write to try to find answers to the questions I ask myself. I am happy that our country is now known for other reasons, for this literature prize which I am so happy and proud to receive.”Ĭondé describes her authorship in the following way: “I write about slavery, Africa, the condition of black people throughout the world because I want to order my thoughts, to understand the world, and to be at peace with myself. In her thank you statement to the New Academy, Condé says about her award that “Guadeloupe is a small country, important to us who are born there, but only mentioned when there are hurricanes and earthquakes.

She currently resides in France with her husband, translator Richard Philcox. Throughout her life and career, Condé has lived and worked in Guinea, Ghana, Senegal, and the United States. Condé has a doctorate from the University of Sorbonne but didn’t publish her first work of fiction until after she turned 40. Maryse Condé was born in 1937 in Pointe-à-Pitre on the French-governed Caribbean island of Guadeloupe. With the award comes a prize sum of 1 million Swedish kronor or $112,000. Maryse Condé receives the award for an authorship that “describes the ravages of colonialism and the postcolonial chaos in a language which is both precise and overwhelming,” the New Academy writes in their press release.

Segu by Maryse Condé