The latest book published in Italy by Maryse Condé is 'The Gospel of the New World', published in 2022 by Giunti in the translation by Silvia Rogai. With this novel the writer, who died tonight in the south of France, nominated several times for the Nobel Prize and winner of the Alternative Nobel in 2018 (the year in which the prestigious recognition of the Swedish Academy was hit by scandals and suspended) has brought us delivered his spiritual testament. In the book we find the themes that she investigated in her works such as multiculturalism, inequalities, religions, but with even more force, with great irony and many literary references from Colette to Camus and Proust. Dictated word for word to a friend, 'The Gospel of the New World' tells us that "equality between men is a myth" and leads us, through the parable of a modern-day Jesus, into the only true path of salvation: the way of love. Born in 1937 in Guadeloupe, Condé graduated from the Sorbonne in Paris and lived in several African countries before moving to the United States for over twenty years where she taught at Berkeley, Harvard and Columbia University and settling in France where she died. Author of books such as Vita perfida (Edizioni E/O), Segù (Edizioni Lavoro) and Io, Tituba black witch of Salem (Giunti), she dedicated this latest novel to the memory of the Nobel Prize winner Josè Saramago, author of 'The Gospel according to Jesus Christ' in whom we find a very human messiah.
Pascal, found one Easter Sunday in a shed, adopted by the Ballanda couple, devout Christians who were unable to have children, is the contemporary messiah imagined by Maryse Condé in her latest novel. He is a mulatto with unearthly beauty, with straight black hair and grey-green eyes whose "race" was impossible to establish, the latter word - says the writer in the book - "now obsolete" which should be replaced with " origin". And discovering his mysterious origins is Pascal's obsession who does not have a peaceful relationship with his adoptive parents, Eulalie of Viking origins and Jean-Pierre, who descends from an African, dedicated to the cultivation of flowers including the Cayenne Rose and the Rosa Te' te Ne' gresse. As he grows up, the boy of divine origins begins to perform various wonders and has a following of passionate disciples. He moves between Guadeloupe, New York, Brazil and the favelas, he meets his real mother who converted to Islam and goes in search of his father, Corazon Tejara, a professor of history of religions, who leaves everything and founds an ashram and becomes a master to whom a prophecy had revealed that his son would not be like the others.
When Pascal realizes that his mission is to make the world more harmonious and tolerant, he founds the association Le Gai Savoir, in homage to Nietzsche's 'The Gay Science', but recruits only twelve members including two unemployed people who had plundered the Parisian suburbs.
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