The New Academy Prize in Literature – founded after the 2018 Nobel Prize for Literature was cancelled as a result of sexual assault scandal – has been awarded to Guadeloupean author Maryse Condé. She is the author of some 20 novels, and her best known work in the English-speaking world is Segu.
Ann Pålsson, the chair of the judging panel, commented: ‘Maryse Condé is a grand storyteller. Her authorship belongs to world literature. In her work, she describes the ravages of colonialism and the postcolonial chaos in a language which is both precise and overwhelming. The magic, the dream and the terror is, as also love, constantly present. Fiction and reality overlap each other and people live as much in an imagined world with long and complicated traditions, as the ongoing present.’
Condé was born in 1937 in Pointe-à-Pitre in Guadelope in the West Indies. She later lived and worked in Paris, West Africa and the US, before returning to France where she now resides. Speaking on a video played at the award ceremony in Stockholm, she spoke of the importance of this achievement for the people of Guadeloupe: ‘We are such a small country, only mentioned when there are hurricanes or earthquakes and things like that. Now we are so happy to be recognised for something else.’
Condé was shortlisted for the New Academy Prize in Literature alongside three other authors: British fantasy author Neil Gaiman, Vietnamese-born Canadian writer Kim Thúy and Japanese author Haruki Murakami. Murakami later withdrew himself from contention for the awards, citing a desire to concentrate on his writing.
The New Academy was set up in response to the scandal that engulfed the prestigious Swedish Academy earlier this year and was brought to fruition by the collective power of many voices, including 100 Swedish cultural figures and numerous libraries. It will be dissolved in December.
