Waiting for the Waters to Rise

Press Quotes

Praise for Marysé Conde

“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 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 Waiting for the Waters to Rise

“Condé’s text, in fact, is sprinkled with the names of global literary giants—Aimé Césaire, Jacques Roumain, Ousmane Sembène, Mahmoud Darwish, Derek Walcott—a roll call she certainly deserves to be added to.”
New York Times

“Maryse Condé’s Waiting for the Waters to Rise begins in her native Guadeloupe but is ultimately a novel that centers on statelessness. The three characters at the novel’s heart—Babakar, Movar, and Fouad from Mali, Haiti, and Palestine respectively—are all migrants driven from their homelands. Condé is a master storyteller capable of traversing multiple countries with their own histories of colonialism and political violence so that we come to know each character more intimately and why the friendship they forge is so vital to their survival.”
Brooklyn Rail

“While this novel takes its protagonist Babakar through civil wars and other scenes of global strife, it also moves forward and backward in time to illustrate the actions that took place decades and centuries before and contributed to his current state. The result is a moving story of isolation, community, and families both chosen and biological.”
TOBIAS CARROLL, Words Without Borders

“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 book…it is a novel that cements Condé as a literary giant who beautifully chronicles the humanity found in some of the most violent places in the world.”
GABINO IGLESIAS, NPR

“Maryse Condé’s novel Waiting for the Waters to Rise addresses immigration, nationalism, friendship, colorism, and political power through the intersecting lives of three friends…As the story jumps from locale to locale, it conjures up the sense of statelessness that binds the men together. The prose is fluid, luminous, and evocative of each setting…The subtle cynicism throughout the novel is balanced by the love the men have for each other.”
Foreword Reviews, starred review

“Condé puts forth the secrets and histories of a fascinating cast, producing a timeless exploration of the wounds that emerge—and linger—when 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

“Condé’s latest novel to be published in English is a powerful tale about immigration and the search for home, connecting Mali, Haiti and the author’s native Guadeloupe.”
Financial Times

“A story as much about what is possible between cultures as what is desperate about Haiti.”
Lit Hub

“Waiting for the Waters to Rise is a powerful and moving novel about lineage, heritage, roots, and what we ‘inherit’ from our families. It is compelling, and at times devastating, as Condé traverses multiple countries with histories of political violence and colonialism.”
European Literature Network

“When I think of Maryse Condé, I think of stories with a ton of magical flair. Waiting for the Waters to Rise is a moving read for the way the language gently draws you in. Condé’s language is dreamlike, suffused with poetry. The novel is enough of a page-turner, but what really keeps you transfixed to the page is the writing.”
AINEHI EDORO, Brittle Paper

“A love letter to the Caribbean”
The Guardian

“Maryse Condé has lost nothing of her inimitable style, nor of her talent for painting strong and true characters.”
Le Monde

“Maryse Condé has that remarkable talent of illuminating characters who are immersed in shadows.”
Brune Magazine

“As always, Condé here delivers a sublime novel, mesmerizing, traversed by the destiny of three characters between Africa, the Antilles, and Haiti.”
Miss Ebène

“A poignant and discreet story, with endearing characters.”
Lire

“A map of anguishes and hopes, written in a sensual and melodic language.”
Croire Aujoud’hui

“An enthralling novel, traversed by the destinies of three people, three men linked by an unbeatable friendship, who struggle to break free of  their past.”
La Gazette

“A dense book, a novel with complex layers, a beautiful lesson of humanity in a hostile world.”
L’Avenir

“A novel with multiple twists, but always clear, at the end of which the author leaves us knocked out.”
Femme Actuelle

“The author Maryse Condé reveals, once again, her talent as a storyteller à la Selma Lagerlof. She knows how to give body and soul to those caught in the whirlwinds of a merciless history that often surpasses and sometimes destroys them.”
FESTIVAL DU LIVRE

“A translucent novel about the need to make one’s destiny intelligible, even while being stateless, an immigrant, exiled, rejected.”
Gens de la Caraïbe

“A text of great poetry, and a deep exoticism in which we find traces of Jacques Roumain or Jacques Stéphen Alexis.”
Sens Critique