Maryse Condé, eternal candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature, died this Tuesday at the age of 90 in a hospital in Vaucluse, near Marseille. The French writer, born on the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe, was awarded in October 2022 in Murcia with the honorary doctorate from the University of Murcia, the first university institution in the world to grant her this decoration. The author of 'Heart that laughs, heart that cries' and The Desired', select works among thirty books, she had professor Antonia Pagán López as godmother.
Maryse Condé, despite the deterioration of her health, attended the ceremony and on the Espinardo Campus showed her deep gratitude for these signs of attention, especially from the French-speaking literature scholars at the University of Murcia. She appealed to the value of freedom, alluded to “literary cannibalism”, the evils of colonial propaganda and remembered her parents, and her life between Guadeloupe, Africa, the United States and Europe. Condé mentioned, finally, her happiness at being recognized by a foreign university. Condé was supported by her Spanish editors, Enrique Redel and Pilar Adón, founders of the Impedimenta publishing house.
Dear friends, friends:
It is with great sadness that we announce the death of our beloved Maryse Condé. He leaves behind an absolutely masterful work, which has always excited us and which has been one of the backbones of the publishing house.
🖤Merci, Maryse. pic.twitter.com/RXjPcUWhUV
— Impedimenta (@EdImpedimenta) April 2, 2024
Antonia Pagán, professor of French Philology at the UMU and defender of the doctorate for Maryse Condé, thanked the Department of French, Romance, Italian and Arabic Philology for the support provided, the arts and humanities program, the Faculty of Letters and the faculty of University. Pagán said in her brilliant laudatio that Condé is a precursor of the issues of women and orality in the Antilles, giving voice to sectors of Creole and African societies. Novelist and teacher, her female figures have a critical conscience about the world in the face of inequality and breaking the silence about the female condition. Representative of Creoleness, her work has a revealing cosmopolitanism, describing the friction between Eastern and Western cultures. She lived in different African countries, before returning to Paris and earning a doctorate at the Sorbonne. She is the author of books such as 'Heart that laughs, heart that cries', 'I, Tituba' and 'The accelerated life', among many others.
President of the Committee for the Memory of Slavery. Critic, researcher and analyst of Francophone literature, Condé was an honorary member of the Quebec Academy of Letters, and Alternative Nobel Prize Winner in 2018. The first doctoral thesis on her work in Spain was defended in 2014 by Isaac Cremades. The scientific production on Condé at the UMU contributed to raising new perspectives for study and promoted exchange with other European universities. According to Pagán, the universal dimension of Maryse Condé is testimony to the vicissitudes of today's world and in her work a will for justice and a need for reparation for slavery can be seen. Another look at multiculturalism that continues to feed and relieve readers.
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