Praise for Maryse Condé

"An extraordinary storyteller." —Bernardine Evaristo 

"The grand queen, the empress, of Caribbean literature." —Fiammetta Rocco,The Guardian

"Throughout her four-decade literary career, the Guadeloupean writer has explored a global vision of the Black diaspora, and placed Caribbean life at the center. In the past few years, Condé has been showered with honors and accolades across the globe. The Haitian writer Edwidge Danticat sees Condé as a “giant of literature,” whose prolific work connects continents and generations. One thing is certain: Condé is finally receiving the acclaim her wide-ranging body of work deserves.” —Anderson Tepper, The New York Times 

“She describes the ravages of colonialism and the post-colonial chaos in a language which is both precise and overwhelming. In her stories the dead live close to the living in a world where gender, race, and class are constantly turned over in new constellations.” —ANN PÅLSSON, Jury, New Academy Prize in Literature

“Condé is a born storyteller.” —Publishers Weekly

Praise for The Gospel According to the New World

SHORTLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE 2023

“The great voice of the Caribbean.” —The International Booker Prize 2023 panel of judges

"The book borrows from the tradition of magical realism and draws us into a world full of colour and life. This is a book that succeeds in mixing humour with poetry, and depth with lightness." —The International Booker Prize 2023 panel of judges

"The novel (The Gospel According to the New World) follows a mixed-race, Christ-like figure who travels the world in search of meaning and belonging. Along the way, he encounters revolutionaries, tyrants, false prophets and actual Judases — not to mention a string of passionate lovers. It feels like a capstone work" —Anderson Tepper, The New York Times 

"This inventive bildungsroman follows Pascal, an abandoned child in Martinique whose colorful life mirrors that of Jesus Christ, as he seeks to understand his purpose."—The New York Times

“French novelist Condé (Waiting for the Waters to Rise) delivers an ingenious bildungsroman of a messianic figure in contemporary Martinique. Readers will be transfixed.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review

“The leading Caribbean writer’s latest, compelling novel does not preach but it does instruct.”—Irish Times

“Joyful and optimistic ...  a deceptively simple novel full of wisdom, generosity of spirit, and the writer’s palpable tenderness towards the world and her craft.” —LEÏLA SLIMANI, author of the international bestseller The Perfect Nanny

"In the intricate, elegantly written The Gospel According to the New World by Maryse Condé (Waiting for the Waters to Rise), a miracle child searches for the mission that will bring meaning to his life and finds it in ordinary existence. A couple who has desperately longed for a child finds newborn infant Pascal in a stable one Easter morning. The child is beautiful, and of indeterminate but apparently mixed race, and he becomes the subject of rumors that he may be the younger son of God. Condé starts by hitting the major beats of the Gospels: a humble yet remarkable birth, healings, feeding the multitudes and acclamation from the masses--followed by ridicule and betrayal. But in this meditative bildungsroman, the potential messiah, once he discovers his origins, searches in vain for his purpose and for connection with his biological father." —Shelf Awareness 

"The latest novel to appear in translation from Maryse Condé is set in Martinique, where a series of events reminiscent of certain other events that took place around 2,000 years ago seem to be happening again. It is entirely possible that the author of this book could one day become the first writer to win both the Alternative Nobel Prize and the Nobel Prize, which would be amazing." —Volume 1 Brooklyn

Praise for Maryse Condé

“Maryse Condé is a great storyteller, she has managed to explore very political issues—gender, race, colonialism, class, postcolonial issues, slavery—and she did that a long time ago, and she did that in a variety of historical and geographical backgrounds. For me, she is a pioneer for us Afro-descendent women writers. She bridges gaps among the whole Black diaspora.” —BEATA UMUBYEYI MAIRESSE

“She is part of our Black family … She has helped us to see ourselves reflected in so many different mirrors that she holds for us … She is a force of nature, she is an inspiration to women … She has given us so much.”—BISI ADJAPON

“There are lots of things I like about Maryse Condé’s writing, but one thing that gets me every time is the lyricism of her prose.”—CHIKA UNIGWE

“It’s inspiring to see that Condé gives words and meaning to our histories—African histories, Black histories, Black lives.”—CLARICE GARGARD

“Maryse Condé has given me the freedom to call myself woman.” —EDWIGE-RENÉE DRO

“Maryse Condé is an African literary elder … she reminds us Anglophone readers that there is a world of Francophone literature out there that we are missing out on. I would like to point out that Maryse Condé built a bridge between Africa and the Caribbean world … There’s this thing she does where she holds the reader’s hand, and the reader gets comfortable … and somewhere along the way you get smacked in the face.” —JENNIFER NANSUBUGA MAKUMBI

“Her writing is so rich. It’s so vibrant. But, as well, you are learning things all the time. She’s just a wonderful storyteller. She’s a masterful storyteller. But she also has a sense of realism in her work. It’s just wonderful—it’s an experience, reading her work.” —KADIJA GEORGE

“Maryse Condé shows African lives in a way that’s rich, that’s glamorous, and in a way that shows the characters to be as flawed as they really are … It’s very rare to come across a writer of fiction who puts so much of their personal story into their work … Her books challenge one’s perceptions of oneself, which I think is one of the greatest things that Miss Maryse Condé does for the Black person. When you read her work you are forced to reexamine the definition of your own Blackness.” —LOLA SHONEYIN

“Her work really links the questions that face Black people all over the world … showing you the conditions that the Black person faces in the world.” —MOLARA WOOD

“I love the honesty … she doesn’t go with the flow. It’s very easy for someone of her generation to have gone along with the tide of African socialism or Négritude, that sort of thing, but she’s always been honest about any misgivings or disinterest in certain currents of thinking and culture. She’s very original in that respect.”—NOO SARO-WIWA

“I think she embodies the world. She belongs to the world … the breadth of her global experience, at a time when we didn’t speak about Black women as belonging to the world is remarkable.” —SISONKE MSIMANG

“Maryse Condé is a treasure of world literature, writing from the center of the African diaspora with brilliance and a profound understanding of all humanity.”—RUSSELL BANKS

“Maryse Condé is the grande dame of Caribbean literature.” —NCRV Gids

Praise for The Gospel According to the New World

“With The Gospel According to the New World, Maryse Condé offers us a poetic and haunting fable-like novel. A newborn left in a garden, miracles and symbols—this is a biblical story that evokes wonder and conjures a welcome optimism. There is no age limit on dreaming.” —ELLE

“A moving, gripping humanist novel not devoid of humor. An evenhanded reflection on fraternity and love in the twenty-first century. Maryse Condé is phenomenal.”—Aujourd’hui en France

“What a delightful adventure! Maryse Condé has the audacity to reinvent the Gospel, adapting it to her island, today’s Guadeloupe. Maryse Condé’s usual colorful, rich, sensuous prose sweeps us along. The author mischievously sticks close to the life of Jesus and then breaks away from it with the imagination and verve of a griot: it’s a celebration.” —La Vie

“An irresistible version of the life of Jesus. What holds this novel together—more than the diversity of the episodes, the beauty of the erotic scenes, and the book’s humor—is Maryse Condé’s ability to play with our need to believe in a savior and our hope that another world is possible, as well as with the necessity to laugh with that dream. The book’s second victory is its portrait of the messiah as a man who goes to college and learns about the complexity of the world by talking to women of all walks of life. The person the author imagines as the next messiah is a humble and loving being.” —Le Monde des livres

Praise for Waiting for the Waters to Rise

“Condé’s text is sprinkled with the names of global literary giants—Aimé Césaire, Jacques Roumain, Ousmane Sembène, Mahmoud Darwish, Derek Walcott—a roll call she certainly deserves to be added to.” —New York Times

“Condé puts forth the secrets and histories of a fascinating cast, producing a timeless exploration of the wounds that emerge—and linger—when people lose those who mean the most to them, be it their family, friends, or country. This faithful portrayal of grief and displacement is tough to forget.” —Publishers Weekly

“Condé excels in adding depth and texture to lives that are often relegated to the cutting room of disaster footage and humanitarian appeals.” —Irish Times

“At once touching and devastating, the book explores the effects of loss and grief on a personal, communal, and national level, but does so with a personal voice that feels more like a having a conversation than reading a book—it is a novel that cements Condé as a literary giant who beautifully chronicles the humanity found in some of the most violent places in the world.” —GABINO IGLESIAS, NPR

“Maryse Condé’s novel Waiting for the Waters to Rise addresses immigration, nationalism, friendship, colorism, and political power through the intersecting lives of three friends. As the story jumps from locale to locale, it conjures up the sense of statelessness that binds the men together. The prose is fluid, luminous, and evocative of each setting. The subtle cynicism throughout the novel is balanced by the love the men have for each other.” —Foreword Reviews, starred review

“While this novel takes its protagonist Babakar through civil wars and other scenes of global strife, it also moves forward and backward in time to illustrate the actions that took place decades and centuries before and contributed to his current state. The result is a moving story of isolation, community, and families both chosen and biological.” —Words Without Borders

“When I think of Maryse Condé, I think of stories with a ton of magical flair. Waiting for the Waters to Rise is a moving read for the way the language gently draws you in. Condé’s language is dreamlike, suffused with poetry. The novel is enough of a page-turner, but what really keeps you transfixed to the page is the writing.” —AINEHI EDORO, Brittle Paper

“Maryse Condé’s Waiting for the Waters to Rise begins in her native Guadeloupe but is ultimately a novel that centers on statelessness. The three characters at the novel’s heart—Babakar, Movar, and Fouad from Mali, Haiti, and Palestine respectively—are all migrants driven from their homelands. Condé is a master storyteller capable of traversing multiple countries with their own histories of colonialism and political violence so that we come to know each character more intimately and why the friendship they forge is so vital to their survival.” —Brooklyn Rail

“A love letter to the Caribbean.” —The Guardian

“Maryse Condé has lost nothing of her inimitable style, nor of her talent for painting strong and true characters.” —Le Monde

“Maryse Condé has that remarkable talent of illuminating characters who are immersed in shadows.” —Brune Magazine

“As always, Condé here delivers a sublime novel, mesmerizing, traversed by the destiny of three characters between Africa, the Antilles, and Haiti.”—Miss Ébène

“A poignant and discreet story, with endearing characters.” —Lire

“A map of anguishes and hopes, written in a sensual and melodic language.” —Croire Aujourd’hui

“An enthralling novel, traversed by the destinies of three people, three men linked by an unbeatable friendship, who struggle to break free of their past.” —La Gazette

“A dense book, a novel with complex layers, a beautiful lesson of humanity in a hostile world.” —L’Avenir

“A novel with multiple twists, but always clear, at the end of which the author leaves us knocked out.” —Femme Actuelle

“The author Maryse Condé reveals, once again, her talent as a storyteller à la Selma Lagerlof. She knows how to give body and soul to those caught in the whirlwinds of a merciless history that often surpasses and sometimes destroys them.” —Festival Du Livre

“A translucent novel about the need to make one’s destiny intelligible, even while being stateless, an immigrant, exiled, rejected.” —Gens de la Caraïbe

“A text of great poetry, and a deep exoticism in which we find traces of Jacques Roumain or Jacques Stéphen Alexis.” —Sens Critique

Praise for The Wondrous and Tragic Life of Ivan and Ivana

“It’s a polyphonic story. It’s a love story, about politics, as always, but about desire, and family … she shows the dangers of binary thinking.”—BEATA UMUBYEYI MAIRESSE

“There is so much tension. And the tension came almost every few pages. Having them as twins, you’re seeing both sides of how a life can be and cannot be, especially coming from a colonial Caribbean island, and going to Africa, and then going to Europe. You can see the tragedy that colonialism can bring. So powerful, and so, really, un-put-down-able.” —KADIJA GEORGE

“It really challenged my perception of how individuals feel right before they carry out terrorist acts. It was almost as if it was an extreme lack of empathy, rather than extreme emotions, that propelled and enabled Ivan.” —KIISA SOYINKA

“A wonderful book. Very layered—layers of history, layers of time, narratives, places—and all sewn together by the story of this one life that Ivan and Ivana live through.” —MOLARA WOOD

“Beating in the novel’s heart is orality, carrying with it the breath of histories, literatures and languages of Africa and the Caribbean. The truth is not only murky and complex, it is often elusive. All we have is interpretation.” —Irish Times

“The turbulent narrative unfolds in a deceptively relaxed manner; incidents happen with the abrupt motivelessness of fairytale, but the novel is all the more powerful for those effects.” —Sunday Times

“The Wondrous and Tragic Life of Ivan and Ivana is a rollicking, rumbustious and slyly mischievous Candide for our times.” —MAYA JAGGI, The Guardian

“Condé is at her signature best: offering complex, polyphonic and ultimately shattering stories whose provocations linger long after the final pages. The book is a reflection on the dangers of binary thinking. One is never on steady ground with Condé; she is not an ideologue, and hers is not the kind of liberal, safe, down-the-line morality that leaves the reader unimplicated.”—JUSTIN TORRES, New York Times

“The Wondrous and Tragic Life of Ivan and Ivana is a searing literary portrait of the exploitation of immigrants, the corruption of governments, and the powerful emergence of radicalism, with astute commentary on how these elements breed trauma, generation after generation.” —Foreword Reviews

“Set during the Charlie Hebdo attacks, this is a fast-paced saga that reveals a seldom-addressed period of African history. Condé’s writing is both lyrical and textured, and showcases her tremendous talents.” —Booklist

“Condé’s scope is expansive: cosmic, global, and deeply personal. The result is a story from the perspective of the Global South that enthralls as it explores the urgent economic and cultural contradictions of post-colonialism, globalization, class, and alienation.” —Arts Fuse

“An exploration of contemporary chaos.” —France-Amérique

“Condé has a gift for storytelling and an unswerving focus on her characters, combined with a mordant sense of humor.” —New York Times Book Review

“What an astounding novel. Never have I read anything so wild and loving, so tender and ruthless. Condé is one of our greatest writers, a literary sorcerer, but here she has outdone even herself, summoned a storm from out of the world’s troubled heart. Ivan and Ivana, in their love, in their Attic fates, mirror our species’ terrible brokenness and its improbable grace.” —JUNOT DÍAZ

“The breadth, depth, and power of Maryse Condé’s majestic work are exceptionally remarkable. The Wondrous and Tragic Life of Ivan and Ivana is a superb addition to this incomparable oeuvre, and is one of Condé’s most timely, virtuoso, and breathtaking novels. ”—EDWIDGE DANTICAT

“Brilliantly imagined, Maryse Condé’s new novel presents a dual bildungsroman of twins born into poverty in the African diaspora and follows their global travels to its shocking ending. Once again, Condé transmutes contemporary political traumas into a mesmerizing family fable.” —HENRY LOUIS GATES, JR.

“Maryse Condé offers us with The Wondrous and Tragic Life of Ivan and Ivana yet another ambitious, continent-crossing whirlwind of a literary journey. The marvelous siblings at the heart of her tale are inspiring and unsettling in equal measure, richly drawn incarnations of the contemporary postcolonial individual in perpetual geographic and cultural movement. It is a remarkable story from start to finish.” —KAIAMA L. GLOVER

“Maryse Condé’s prodigious fictional universes are founded on a radical and generative disregard for boundaries based on geography, religion, history, race, and gender. In The Wondrous and Tragic Life of Ivan and Ivana, the most intimate human relationships acquire meaning only on the scale of the world-historical, and as we follow the twins in their fated journey from the Caribbean to Africa and Europe, we learn about love, happiness, calamity, and, at last, the survival of hope.” —ANGELA Y. DAVIS

“With this story of a young man from Guadeloupe who finds himself persuaded by the pull of jihad, Condé has written one of her most impressive novels to date, one that seamlessly resonates with the problems of our time.” —Le Monde

“Condé’s latest novel is a beautiful and dramatic story with its origins in the Charlie Hebdo attacks. Masterly.” —Afrique Magazine

“Maryse Condé addresses very contemporary issues in her latest novel: racism, jihadi terrorism, political corruption and violence, economic inequality in Guadeloupe and metropolitan France, globalization and immigration.” —World Literature Today

“This new novel, written in an almost exuberant style, contains many typical Condé elements, in particular the mix of a small family with global events, and the nuances of existing images.” —De Volkskrant

“Told by a charming, lively third-person narrator, the novel evokes its various settings beautifully and takes a penetrating, wide-ranging look at the effects of racism, colonialism, and inequality.” —Bookriot

Praise for Segu

“Condé’s story is rich and colorful and glorious. It sprawls over continents and centuries to find its way into the reader’s heart.” —MAYA ANGELOU

“Exotic, richly textured and detailed, this narrative, alternating between the lives of various characters, illuminates magnificently a little-known historical period. Virtually every page glitters with nuggets of cultural fascination.” —Los Angeles Times

“The most significant novel about black Africa published in many a year. A wondrous novel about a period of African history few other writers have addressed. Much of the novel’s radiance comes from the lush description of a traditional life that is both exotic and violent.” —New York Times Book Review

“With the dazzling storytelling skills of an African griot, Maryse Condé has written a rich, fast-paced saga of a great kingdom during the tumultuous period of the slave trade and the coming of Islam. Segu is history as vivid and immediate as today. It has restored a part of my past that has long been missing.” —PAULE MARSHALL, author of Daughters

“Segu is an overwhelming accomplishment. It injects into the density of history characters who are as alive as you and I. Passionate, lusty, greedy, they are in conflict with themselves as well as with God and Mammon. Maryse Condé has done us all a tremendous service by rendering a history so compelling and exciting. Segu is a literary masterpiece I could not put down.” —LOUISE MERIWETHER

“A stunning reaffirmation of Africa and its peoples as set down by others whose works have gone unnoticed. Condé not only backs them up, but provides new insights as well. Segu has its own dynamic. It’s a starburst.” —JOHN A. WILLIAMS

Praise for Crossing the Mangrove

“Condé writes elegantly in a style that beautifully survives translation from the French. She gives readers a flavor of the French and Creole stew that is the Guadeloupean tongue. In so doing, Condé conveys the many subtle distinctions of color, class, and language that made up this society.” —Chicago Tribune

Praise for Tales from the Heart

“Honest, exquisitely measured―inspiring in its reminder of the human spirit’s capacity to endure.” —New York Times Book Review

“An astute study of family and place.” —Washington Post Book World

“Upon reaching the final page and the start of Condé’s journey to adulthood, readers will regret that this brief, colorful, and lively remembrance has ended.” —Publishers Weekly

“A useful look at the psychological consequences of intolerance.” —Kirkus Reviews

Praise for Windward Heights

“Condé is a masterly storyteller who also proves deft at reinterpreting other people’s stories, as she shows here with this energetic reimagining of Wuthering Heights set in Cuba and Guadeloupe at the turn of the century.” —New York Times Book Review

“Condé gives Brontë a cultural context―a fine and unique accomplishment.” —Washington Post

“Through Condé’s transformation of the tragedy in Wuthering Heights, she creates a narrative that seduces, evokes, and makes us think about the kinds of emotions that have moved human beings throughout our existence.” —Chicago Tribune

“Exotic and eloquent. Condé takes Emily Brontë’s cold-climate classic on obsessive love and makes it hot and lush.” —USA Today

“A confident and incisive Caribbeanization of a European master-text by a master novelist of African descent.” —Village Voice

“The author weaves in the history of the region along with themes of passionate love, color prejudice, oppression, and social unrest to create an engaging and well-written book that is difficult to put down.” —Multicultural Review

“Condé has given readers an astonishing new way in which to contemplate our ancestral past.” —Black Issues Book Review

Maryse Condé is the Grande Dame of Caribbean Literature. She was born in Guadeloupe in 1934 as the youngest of eight siblings. She taught Francophone Literature at Colombia University in New York, and lived there for many years. She has also lived in various West African countries, most notably in Mali, where she gained inspiration for her worldwide bestseller Segu, for which she was awarded the African Literature Prize and several other respected French awards. Condé was awarded the 2018 New Academy Prize (or “Alternative Nobel”) in Literature as well as the 2021 Prix mondial Cino Del Duca for her oeuvre. She also received the Grand-Croix de l’Ordre national du Mérite from President Emmanuel Macron in 2020. She conquered the hearts of many readers in English-language territories with her novels The Wondrous and Tragic Life of Ivan and Ivana and Waiting for the Waters to Rise, longlisted for the 2021 National Book Award for Translated Literature in the US.

Richard Philcox is Maryse Condé’s husband and translator. He has also published new translations of Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth and Black Skin, White Masks. He has taught translation on various American college campuses and won grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts for the translation of Condé’s works. Philcox’s translation of Condé’s Waiting for the Waters to Rise, published by World Editions, was longlisted for the 2021 National Book Award for Translated Literature in the US, and his translation of her Crossing the Mangrove is now a Penguin Classic. Philcox has also translated Condé’s other World Editions title, The Wondrous and Tragic Life of Ivan and Ivana.