Maryse Conde, winner of the Alternative Nobel Prize for Literature, has died

Guadeloupe writer M. Conde (Maryse Boucolon) was born on February 11, 1937. Wrote in French. In 1975, he graduated from the Sorbonne University studying Caribbean literature. He taught West Indian literature at universities in France and the United States.

Wrote the historical novels “Hérémakhonon” (1976, about a young woman from the West Indies in search of her roots), “Un Saison a Rihata” (Un Saison a Rihata 1981, about an African country at the end of the 20th century). The most famous novel, “Ségou” (Vol. 2, 1984-85), describes the problems of the slave trade, religious issues and colonization of the historical city of Ségou (present-day Mali) in the years 1797-1860. The novel “Moi, Tituba: The Black Witch of Salem” (Moi, Tituba, sorciere noire de Salem, 1986) tells the story of an American slave. Other more important novels: “The Tree of Life” (La Vie scélérate, 1987), “The Colony of the New World” (La Colonie du nouveau monde 1993), “The Migration of Hearts” (La Migration des coeurs, 1995), “Desirada” (Desirada 1997) , “The Story of the Cannibal Woman” (Histoire de femme cannibale, 2003), “The Joliba Curve” (A la Courbe du Joliba 2006).

in 2018 it won the New Academy Award for Literature. It is awarded as an alternative to the Nobel Prize for Literature.

M. Conde’s novel “Waiting for the water to rise”, which was translated by A. Melkūnaitė and published by “Alma littera”, was translated into Lithuanian. The annotation of the novel reads: “Babakar is a doctor. He lives alone, drowned in memories of his childhood in Africa before his exile to Guadeloupe, of his black, blue-eyed mother who comes to visit him in his dreams, his old love Azealia, also dead, and other women he met in his life. Chance or Providence sends him a child – and he is forced to give up his loneliness, his ghosts.

Little Anais has nothing but him. Her mother, a Haitian refugee, died in childbirth, leaving her with nothing but misery and constant running. Babakar wants to give her a different future. They fly to Haiti – plagued by violence, corrupt governments, rebel gangs, but a very beautiful, enchanting island. Babakar is looking for Anais’ family – aunts, uncles, maybe grandparents – who can tell her story. In his wanderings, he can only rely on himself and two friends, Movar and Fuad. Those men are like him – exiles, lonely, searching for themselves, having gone through fire and water.”