Já Tituba, černá čarodějnice ze Salemu – Condéová Maryse (2022)

Tituba is a name preserved from period sources of a Black slave from Barbados who, by the hand of fate, found herself in Salem, America, in 1692. In the Puritan environment, her skin color incites fear, and the mob hysteria culminates in the infamous witch trials. Guadeloupean writer Maryse Condé allows Tituba to narrate the story of the trials from the perspective of the slave in an adventurous blend of fantasy and historical material. While the fate of the real Tituba is unknown, Condé's heroine escapes the gallows and returns to her native Barbados, where the first slave revolts are just breaking out... In the novel about Tituba's journey from the exotic island to the cold New World and back, Maryse Condé touches on themes of colonialism, human freedom, and the plight of women. Her historical fabulation is characterized especially by a distinctive irony with which she approaches both the drastic moments of slaves' lives and, indirectly, contemporary efforts to rectify injustices. The book has been translated into 13 languages. Romantic yet horrific, serious and light-hearted, such is the now cult prose of the author who has been awarded the French Academy Prize and the alternative Nobel Prize in 2018.