Tales from the Heart: True Stories from My Childhood [Paperback]

Winner of the 2018 New Academy Prize in Literature

In this collection of autobiographical essays, Maryse Condé vividly evokes the relationships and events that gave her childhood meaning: discovering her parents’ feelings of alienation; her first crush; a falling out with her best friend; the death of her beloved grandmother; her first encounter with racism.

These gemlike vignettes capture the spirit of Condé’s fiction: haunting, powerful, poignant, and leavened with a streak of humor.Winner of the 2018 New Academy Prize in Literature

Praise for Tales from the Heart

Winner of the 1999 Prix Yourcenar

Honest, exquisitely measured... inspiring in its reminder of the human spirit’s capacity to endure.
—The New York Times Book Review

[An] astute study of family and place.
—Washington Post Book World

Upon reaching the final page and the start of Condé's journey to adulthood, readers will regret that this brief, colorful and lively remembrance has ended.
—Publishers Weekly

A useful look at the psychological consequences of intolerance.
—Kirkus Reviews

Praise for Maryse Condé

An exceptional journey, Maryse Condé weaves an extremely luminous and poetic tale of a woman's transformations as she makes her way through many physical and mental landscapes. Maryse Condé gives us, as always, a remarkable story filled wl³