Members of the Department of French and Italian were saddened to learn of the death of Guadeloupean writer and critic Maryse Condé on April 2, in southern France, at the age of 90. Condé was a long-term visiting fellow in the Humanities Council in the fall of 2003, when she taught a graduate seminar on francophone literature and culture outside of France called Literary Cannibalism. She was the author of 18 novels, as well as plays, critical essays, and autobiographical texts, and was awarded many prizes, including the New Academy Prize in Literature (the alternate Nobel) in 2018. Her work engaged with such contemporary concerns as decolonization, the experience of the black diaspora, personal and cultural identity, and the politics of gender and race. She taught at numerous institutions in Africa, France, and the United States, and directed the Center for French and Francophone Studies at Columbia University. At Princeton, Condé is remembered for her generosity, her humor, and the inspiring force of both her writing and her teaching.

New York Times Obituary of Maryse Condé by Clay Risen