玛丽斯·孔戴

玛丽斯·孔戴（法语：Maryse Condé，1934年2月11日—2024年4月2日），原姓布科隆（法语：Boucolon），法国女性作家，2018替代诺贝尔文学奖颁发的新学院文学奖的得主。她生于皮特尔角城。中学毕业后去法国本土深造，曾于索邦大学学习英语文学。毕业后曾在几内亚、加纳和塞内加尔当老师。1985年获富布赖特奖学金赴美，后来任教于哥伦比亚大学，2004年退休。孔戴的小说探讨种族，性别和文化问题。她的小说关注非洲人和海外黑人，特别是加勒比海民族之间的关系。其最著名的作品是1985年的历史小说《塞古》（Segu）。

Maryse Condé (née Marise Liliane Appoline Boucolon; 11 February 1934 – 2 April 2024) was a French novelist, critic, and playwright from the French Overseas department and region of Guadeloupe. She was also an academic, whose teaching career took her to West Africa and North America, as well as the Caribbean and Europe. As a writer, Condé is best known for her novel Ségou (1984–1985).

Condé's writings explore the African diaspora that resulted from slavery and colonialism in the Caribbean. Her novels, written in French, have been translated into English, German, Dutch, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Japanese. She won various awards, such as the Grand Prix Littéraire de la Femme (1986), Prix de l'Académie française (1988), Prix Carbet de la Caraïbe (1997) and the New Academy Prize in Literature (2018) for her works. She was considered a strong contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Early life

Born in Pointe-à-Pitre, Guadeloupe, on 11 February 1934, she was the youngest of eight children. Her parents were among the first black instructors in Guadeloupe. Her mother, Jeanne Quidal (who was from Marie-Galante, an island which would often feature in Condé's creative writing), directed her own school for girls. Her father, Auguste Boucolon – previously an educator – founded the small bank "La Caisse Coopérative des prêts", which was later renamed "La Banque Antillaise."

Condé's father, Auguste Boucolon, had two sons from his first marriage: Serge and Albert. Condé's three sisters were Ena, Jeanne, and Gillette, and her brothers were Auguste, Jean, René, and Guy. Condé was born 11 years after Guy, when her mother was 43, and her father 63. Condé described herself as "the spoiled child", which she attributed to her parents' older age, as well as the age-gap between her and her siblings.

Condé began writing at an early age. Before she was 12 years old, she had written a one-act, one-person play. The play was written as a gift for her mother's birthday.

After having graduated from high school, Condé attended Lycée Fénelon from 1953 to 1955, being expelled after two years of attendance. She furthered her studies at the Université de Paris III (Sorbonne Nouvelle) in Paris. During her attendance, along with other West Indians, Condé established the Luis-Carlos Prestes club.

Career

In 1958, Condé attended a rehearsal in Paris of Les Nègres/The Blacks by Jean Genet, where she met the Guinean actor Mamadou Condé. In August 1958, she married Mamadou Condé. They eventually had three children together before separating in 1969 (Condé already had one child from Haitian journalist Jean Dominique). By November 1959, the couple's relationship had already become strained, and Condé decided to go alone to the Ivory Coast, where she taught for a year in Bingerville.

During her returns to Guinea for the holidays, she became politically conscious through a group of Marxist friends, who would influence her to move to Ghana. It was for her a turbulent but formative time that she would later chronicle in her 2012 book La Vie sans fards (What Is Africa to Me? Fragments of a True-to-Life Autobiography), as in the recently independent West African countries she rubbed shoulders with the likes of Malcolm X, Che Guevara, Julius Nyerere and Maya Angelou.

Between the years 1960 and 1972, she taught in Guinea, Ghana and Senegal. While in Ghana, she edited a collection of francophone African literature, Anthologie de la literature africaine d'expression française (Ghana Institute of Languages, 1966). However, she became disillusioned with being "witness to many contradictory events", and accusations against her of suspected subversive activity resulted in Condé's deportation from Ghana.