The Last of the African Kings

Born in Guadeloupe in 1937, Maryse Conde has lived in Africa and a traveled throughout the world. She first won international acclaim for Children of Segu, a novel about Black African experience and the slave trade. Her other writings include the novels "I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem," "Tree of Life," and "Crossing the Mangrove." Richard Philcox is one of the leading translators of Third-World Francophone literature in the world today. He has published translations of six of Conde's novels, including, most recently, Crossing the Mangrove. Leah D. Hewitt is a professor of French at Amherst College and the author of "Autobiographical Tightropes: Simone de Beauvoir, Nathalie Sarraute, Marguerite Duras, Monique Wittig, and Maryse Conde" (Nebraska 1990).