The Gospel According to the New World

SHORTLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE 2023

"The great voice of the Caribbean." -Jury, International Booker 2023**

"French novelist Condé (Waiting for the Waters to Rise)delivers an ingenious bildungsroman of a messianic figure in contemporaryMartinique. Readers will be transfixed." -Publishers Weekly, starred review

A miracle baby is born on Easter Sunday, rumored to be the child of God. Award-winning Caribbean author Maryse Condé follows his journey in search of his origins and mission.

One Easter Sunday, Madame Ballandra puts her hands together and exclaims: "A miracle!" Baby Pascal is strikingly beautiful, brown in complexion, with gray-green eyes like the sea. But where does he come from? Is he really the child of God? So goes the rumor, and many signs throughout his life will cause this theory to gain ground. From journey to journey and from one community to another, Pascal sets off in search of his origins, trying to understand the meaning of his mission. Will he be able to change the fate of humanity? And what will the New World Gospel reveal? For all its beauty, vivacity, humor, and power, Maryse Condé's latest novel is above all a work of combat. Lucid and full of conviction, Condé attests that solidarity and love remain our most extraordinary and lifesaving forces.

Praise for Maryse Condé

She describes the ravages of colonialism and the post-colonial chaos in a language which is both precise and overwhelming. In her stories the dead live close to the living in a world where gender, race, and class are constantly turned over in new constellations. ANN PÅLSSON, Jury, New Academy Prize in Literature

Condé is a born storyteller. Publishers Weekly

Maryse Condé is a great storyteller, she has managed to explore very political issuesgender, race, colonialism, class, postcolonial issues, slaveryand she did that a long time ago, and she did that in a variety of historical and geographical backgrounds. For me, she is a pioneer for us Afro-descendent women writers. She bridges gaps among the whole Black diaspora. BEATA UMUBYEYI MAIRESSE

She is part of our Black family She has helped us to see ourselves reflected in so many different mirrors that she holds for us She is a force of nature, she is an inspiration to women She has given us so much.BISI ADJAPON

There are lots of things I like about Maryse Condé's writing, but one thing that gets me every time is the lyricism of her prose.CHIKA UNIGWE

It's inspiring to see that Condé gives words and meaning to our historiesAfrican histories, Black histories, Black lives.CLARICE GARGARD

Maryse Condé has given me the freedom to call myself woman. EDWIGE-RENÉE DRO

Maryse Condé is an African literary elder she reminds us Anglophone readers that there is a world of Francophone literature out there that we are missing out on. I would like to point out that Maryse Condé built a bridge between Africa and the Caribbean world There's this thing she does where she holds the reader's hand, and the reader gets comfortable and somewhere along the way you get smacked in the face. JENNIFER NANSUBUGA MAKUMBI

Her writing is so rich. It's so vibrant. But, as well, you are learning things all the time. She's just a wonderful storyteller. She's a masterful storyteller. But she also has a sense of realism in her work. It's just wonderfulit's an experience, reading her work. KADIJA GEORGE

Maryse Condé shows African lives in a way that's rich, that's glamorous, and in a way that shows the characters to be as flawed as they really are It's very rare to come across a writer of fiction who puts so much of their personal story into their work Her books challenge one's perceptions of oneself, which I think is one of the greatest things that Miss Maryse Condé does for the Black person. When you read her work you are forced to reexamine the definition of your own Blackness. LOLA SHONEYIN

Her work really links the questions that face Black people all over the world showing you the conditions that the Black person faces in the world. MOLARA WOOD

I love the honesty she doesn't go with the flow. It's very easy for someone of her generation to have gone along with the tide of African socialism or Négritude, that sort of thing, but she's always been honest about any misgivings or disinterest in certain currents of thinking and culture. She's very original in that respect.NOO SARO-WIWA

I think she embodies the world. She belongs to the world the breadth of her global experience, at a time when we didn't speak about Black women as belonging to the world is remarkable. SISONKE MSIMANG What I like is that she's honest. I think she has confidence in her readers and lets them think for themselves, and that I appreciate a lot. VÉRONIQUE TADJO Maryse Condé has managed to successfully bridge the gap between Africa and its diaspora. If nothing else, reading her work helps us get into the mindset to know about our brothers and sisters from the diaspora. ZUKISWA WANNER Maryse Condé is a treasure of world literature, writing from the center of the African diaspora with brilliance and a profound understanding of all humanity.RUSSELL BANKS

Maryse Condé is the grande dame of Caribbean literature. NCRV Gids

Praise for The Gospel According to the New World

With The Gospel According to the New World, Maryse Condé offers us a poetic and haunting fable-like novel. A newborn left in a garden, miracles and symbolsthis is a biblical story that evokes wonder and conjures a welcome optimism. There is no age limit on dreaming. ELLE

A moving, gripping humanist novel not devoid of humor. An evenhanded reflection on fraternity and love in the twenty-first century. Maryse Condé is phenomenal.Aujourd'hui en France

What a delightful adventure! Maryse Condé has the audacity to reinvent the Gospel, adapting it to her island, today's Guadeloupe. Maryse Condé's usual colorful, rich, sensuous prose sweeps us along. The author mischievously sticks close to the life of Jesus and then breaks away from it with the imagination and verve of a griot: it's a celebration. La Vie

An irresistible version of the life of Jesus. What holds this novel togethermore than the diversity of the episodes, the beauty of the erotic scenes, and the book's humoris Maryse Condé's ability to play with our need to believe in a savior and our hope that another world is possible, as well as with the necessity to laugh with that dream. The book's second victory is its portrait of the messiah as a man who goes to college and learns about the complexity of the world by talking to women of all walks of life. The person the author imagines as the next messiah is a humble and loving being. Le Monde des livres

Praise for Waiting for the Waters to Rise

Condé's text is sprinkled with the names of global literary giantsAimé Césaire, Jacques Roumain, Ousmane Sembène, Mahmoud Darwish, Derek Walcotta roll call she certainly deserves to be added to. New York Times

Condé puts forth the secrets and histories of a fascinating cast, producing a timeless exploration of the wounds that emergeand lingerwhen people lose those who mean the most to them, be it their family, friends, or country. This faithful portrayal of grief and displacement is tough to forget. Publishers Weekly

Condé excels in adding depth and texture to lives that are often relegated to the cutting room of disaster footage and humanitarian appeals. Irish Times

At once touching and devastating, the book explores the effects of loss and grief on a personal, communal, and national level, but does so with a personal voice that feels more like a having a conversation than reading a bookit is a novel that cements Condé as a literary giant who beautifully chronicles the humanity found in some of the most violent…