Maryse Condé 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).

The New Academy Prize in Literature was established in 2018 as an alternative to the Nobel Prize in Literature, which was not awarded in 2018 and instead postponed until 2019. The winner was announced on 12 October 2018, the prize being given to the Guadeloupean-French author Maryse Condé, who was praised by the jury as a "grand storyteller [whose] authorship belongs to world literature, describing the ravages of colonialism and the postcolonial chaos in a language which is both precise and overwhelming."