Guadeloupean novelist Maryse Condé wins Alternative Nobel Prize in Literature

Maryse Condé. (Photo by Ulf Andersen/ Getty Images)

After it was announced that the Nobel Prize in Literature would not be awarded in 2018, the New Academy shared that they would be handing out an “alternative” prize.

The New Academy on Friday announced Guadeloupean novelist of more than 20 books, Maryse Condé, as the winner, Guardian reports.

Speaking in a video played at the ceremony, Condé dedicated the award to her “family, my friends and above all the people of Guadeloupe, who will be thrilled and touched seeing me receive this prize.”

Ann Pålsson, the chairperson of the judges, said of Condé:

She describes the ravages of colonialism and the post-colonial chaos in a language which is both precise and overwhelming.

The dead live in her stories closely to the living in a … world where gender, race and class are constantly turned over in new constellations.

Several authors were nominated for the prize, including Nigerians Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Nnedi Okorafor, and Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami, who was named as one of the four finalists but pulled out because he needed to “concentrate on his writing, away from media attention.”