Maryse Condé was 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 in various West African countries. Her worldwide bestseller Segu, was awarded the African Literature Prize. 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. Her novel Waiting for the Waters to Rise was longlisted for the 2021 National Book Award for Translated Literature and The Gospel According to the New World was a 2023 International Booker Prize Finalist. Maryse Condé passed away in 2024.
Richard Philcox was 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 The Gospel According to the New World was a 2023 International Booker Prize Finalist.