Maryse Condé Books In Order

Segu Books In Order

  1. Segu (1987)
  2. The Children of Segu (1989)

Novels

  1. Heremakhonon (1976)
  2. A Season in Rihata (1988)
  3. I, Tituba (1992)
  4. Tree of Life (1992)
  5. Crossing the Mangrove (1995)
  6. The Last of the African Kings (1997)
  7. Windward Heights (1998)
  8. Desirada (2000)
  9. Who Slashed Celanire’s Throat? (2004)
  10. The Story of the Cannibal Woman (2007)
  11. Victoire (2010)
  12. The Belle Creole (2020)
  13. The Wondrous and Tragic Life of Ivan and Ivana (2020)
  14. Waiting for the Waters to Rise (2021)

Collections

  1. Tales from the Heart (2001)

Non fiction

  1. The Journey of a Caribbean Writer (2014)
  2. What Is Africa to Me? (2017)
  3. Of Morsels and Marvels (2020)

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Maryse Condé Books Overview

Segu

A powerful novel of Africa’s history and the men and women who determined its fate. From the East came Islam. From the West, the slave trade. The battle for Africa’s soul had begun…
‘A wondrous novel about a period of African history few other writers have addressed…
Much of the novel’s radiance comes from the lush descriptions of a traditional life that is both exotic and violent.’ THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW’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 Conde has done us all a tremendous service by rendering history so compelling and exciting. Segu is a literary masterpiece I could not put down.’ LOUISE MERIWETHER

Heremakhonon

Veronica Mercier, a sophisticated Caribbean woman teaching and living in Paris, goes to a West African country to complete her search for self identity. There, she finds herself involved with a ‘nig*ger with ancestors’ a cold, calculating minister for the interior and heir to the presidency.

I, Tituba

Offered here for the first time in English is ‘I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem,’ by the Guadeloupean writer Maryse Conde. This novel, winner of the 1986 Grand Prix Litteraire de la Femme, expands on the true story of the West Indian slave Tituba, who was accused of witchcraft in Salem, Massachusetts, arrested in 1962, and forgotton in jail until the general amnesty for witches two years later. Maryse Conde brings Tituba out of historical silence and creates for her a fictional child hood, adolescence, and old age. She turns her into what she calls ‘a sort of female hero, an epic hero*ine, like the legendary ‘Nanny of the maroons,’ who, schooled in the sorcery and magical ritual of obeah, is arrested for healing members of the family that owns her. Rich in postmodern irony, the novel even includes a encounter with Hester Prynne of Hawthorne’s ‘Scarlet Letter.’ Conde breaks new ground in both style and content, transcending cultural and epochal boundaries, not only exposing the hypocrisy of Puritan New England, but challanging us to look at racism and religious bigotry in contemporary America. This readable novel celebrates Tituba’a unique voice, exploring issues of identity and the implications of ‘otherness’ in Western in Western literary traditions. Its multiple layers should delight a wide variety of readers.

Crossing the Mangrove

In this beautifully crafted, Rashomon like novel, Maryse Conde has written a gripping story imbued with all the nuances and traditions of Caribbean culture. Francis Sancher a handsome outsider, loved by some and reviled by others is found dead, face down in the mud on a path outside Riviere au Sel, a small village in Guadeloupe. None of the villagers are particularly surprised, since Sancher, a secretive and melancholy man, had often predicted an unnatural death for himself. As the villagers come to pay their respects they each either in a speech to the mourners, or in an internal monologue reveal another piece of the mystery behind Sancher’s life and death. Like pieces of an elaborate puzzle, their memories interlock to create a rich and intriguing portrait of a man and a community. In the lush and vivid prose for which she has become famous, Conde has constructed a Guadeloupean wake for Francis Sancher. Retaining the full color and vibrance of Conde’s homeland, Crossing the Mangrove pays homage to Guadeloupe in both subject and structure.

The Last of the African Kings

The Last of the African Kings follows the wayward fortunes of a noble African family. It begins with the regal B hanzin, an African king who opposed French colonialism and was exiled to distant Martinique. In the course of this brilliant novel, Maryse Cond tells of B hanzin’s scattered offspring and their lives in the Caribbean and the United States. A book made up of many characters and countless stories, The Last of the African Kings skillfully intertwines the themes of exile, lost origins, memory, and hope. It is set mainly in the Americas, from the Caribbean to modern day South Carolina, yet Africa hovers always in the background.

Windward Heights

Prizewinning writer Maryse Cond reimagines Emily Bront’s passionate novel as a tale of obsessive love between the ‘African’ Rayz and Cathy, the mulatto daughter of the man who takes Rayz in and raises him, but whose treatment goads him into rebellious flight. Retaining the emotional power of the original, Cond shows us Caribbean society in the wake of emancipation.

Desirada

A powerfully redemptive novel about one woman’s search for herself from Guadeloupe to France to the United StatesRanelise is a cook in the small village of La Pointe in Guadeloupe where she rescues a teenage girl from suicide by drowning. The girl, Reynalda Titane, lives at the local jeweler’s grand house where her mother, Nina, is a maid. Reynalda is pregnant and in a state of despair. Ranelise cares for her and the child, christened Marie Noelle, but Reynalda soon flees to France, intent upon getting the education to allow her to rise above her mother’s fate. Desirada is the story of Marie Noelle and her quest to understand the mother who abandoned her, and discover the identity of her father, despite the opposing stories from her mother and her grandmother. It is also the story of generations of island women and the pursuit of a meaningful life despite a tainted personal history. Desirada was awarded the prestigious Prix Carbet de la Caraibe in 1998 given for the best book by a Caribbean author. It is Ms. Conde’s twelfth novel.

Who Slashed Celanire’s Throat?

On one hand, beautiful Celanire a woman mutilated at birth and left for dead appears today to be a saint; she is a tireless worker who has turned numerous neglected institutions into vibrant schools for motherless children. But she is also a woman apprehended by demons, as death and misfortune seem to follow in her wake. Traveling from Guadeloupe to West Africa to Peru, the mysterious, seductive, and disarming Celanire is driven to uncover the truth of her past at any cost and avenge the crimes committed against her. With her characteristic blend of magical realism and fantasy, and inspired by a true story, Maryse Conde hauntingly imagines Celanire in an unforgettable novel a most dazzling addition to the deeply prolific and widely celebrated author’s brilliant body of work.

The Story of the Cannibal Woman

One dark night in Cape Town, Ros lie’s husband goes out for a pack of cigarettes and never comes back. Not only is she left with unanswered questions about his violent death but she is also left without any means of support. At the urging of her housekeeper and best friend, the new widow decides to take advantage of the strange gifts she has always possessed and embarks on a career as a clairvoyant. As Ros lie builds a new life for herself and seeks the truth about her husband’s murder, acclaimed Caribbean author Maryse Cond crafts a deft exploration of post apartheid South Africa and a smart, gripping thriller. The Story of the Cannibal Woman is both contemporary and international, following the lives of an interracial, intercultural couple in New York City, Tokyo, and Capetown. Maryse Cond is known for vibrantly lyrical language and fearless, inventive storytelling she uses both to stunning effect in this magnificently original novel.

Victoire

The critically acclaimed, award winning author of the classic historical novel Segu, Maryse Cond has pieced together the life of her maternal grandmother to create a moving and profound novel. Maryse Cond ‘s personal journey of discovery and revelation becomes ours as we learn of Victoire, her white skinned mestiza grandmother who worked as a cook for the Walbergs, a family of white Creoles, in the French Antilles. Using her formidable skills as a storyteller, Cond describes her grandmother as having ‘Australian whiteness for the color of her skin…
She jarred with my world of women in Italian straw bonnets and men necktied in three piece linen suits, all of them a very black shade of black. She appeared to me doubly strange.’ Victoire was spurred by Cond ‘s desire to learn of her family history, resolving to begin her quest by researching the life of her grandmother. While uncovering the circumstances of Victoire‘s unique life story, Cond also comes to grips with a haunting question: How could her own mother, a black militant, have been raised in the Walberg’s home, a household of whites? Creating a work that takes readers into a time and place populated with unforgettable characters that inspire and amaze, Cond ‘s blending of memoir and imagination, detective work and storytelling artistry, is a literary gem that readers won’t soon forget.

Tales from the Heart

Maryse was the eighth child in her family, an unexpected one. Her father, a civil servant, had been awarded the Legion d’honneur; her elegant mother had been a schoolteacher. She arrived after a difficult pregnancy while the town of La Pointe, Guadeloupe was in the midst of celebrating Mardi Gras. She was raised to appreciate culture, the opera, the great French paintings and was sent to a privately run school. Hers was a proud family in which appearances, skin tone, language, and class was important, her parents ever mindful of being a part of a world which for centuries had been reserved for Whites only. In this collection of autobiographical essays, Maryse Cond vividly evokes the relationships and events which gave her childhood meaning: discovering her parents feelings of alienation; her first crush and short lived romance; a falling out with her best friend over a frank as*sessment of her beauty; the death of her beloved grandmother when she was nine; an incident at a playground that was her first encounter with racism. Maryse began to invent a universe of her own at an early age, and these gem like vignettes capture the spirit of her fiction: haunting, powerful, poignant, and leavened with a streak of humor. They paint a wonderful picture of a little girl trying to find her place in the world, one that is redolent of the music and colors of the Caribbean, as well as of the harsher climate of Paris. Tales from the Heart was awarded the Prix Yourcenar in 1999 for excellence in French writing by an author who resides in the United States.

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