This wild and entertaining novel expands on the true story of the West Indian slave Tituba, who was accused of witchcraft in Salem, Massachusetts, arrested in 1692, and forgotten in jail until the general amnesty for witches two years later. Maryse Condé brings Tituba out of historical silence and creates for her a fictional childhood, adolescence, and old age. She turns her into what she calls "a sort of female hero, an epic heroine, like the legendary ‘Nanny of the maroons,’" who, schooled in the sorcery and magical ritual of obeah, is arrested for healing members of the family that owns her.
CARAF Books:Caribbean and African Literature Translated from French
This book has been supported by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, an independent federal agencY.
Maryse Condé (b. February 11, 1934) is a French novelist, critic, and playwright from Guadeloupe. Condé is best known for her novel Ségou (1984–85). She has won various awards, such as the Grand Prix Littéraire de la Femme (1986), Prix de l’Académie française (1988), Prix Carbet de la Carraibe (1997) and the New Academy Prize in Literature (2018) for her works.
Richard Philcox is one of the leading translators of Third-World Francophone literature in the world today. Philcox has taught translation on various American college campuses and won grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts for the translation of Maryse Condé’s works.
Table of Contents
Foreword Acknowledgments I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem Historical Note Glossary Afterword
What People are Saying About This
Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Maryse Condé is a sorcerer of prose, and in this richly imagined novel, the past and present meet like the earth and sky of the horizon. —(Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Harvard University)
