Victoire
Maryse Condé
Atria Books
<p><p><b>The critically acclaimed, award-winning author of the classic historical novel <I>Segu,</i> Maryse Cond&#233; has pieced together the life of her maternal grandmother to create a moving and profound novel.</b><p>Maryse Cond&#233;'s personal journey of discovery and revelation becomes ours as we learn of Victoire, her white-skinned mestiza grandmother who worked as a cook for the Walbergs, a family of white Creoles, in the French Antilles.<P>Using her formidable skills as a storyteller, Cond&#233; describes her grandmother as having "Australian whiteness for the color of her skin...She jarred with my world of women in Italian straw bonnets and men necktied in three-piece linen suits, all of them a very black shade of black. She appeared to me doubly strange."<P><I>Victoire</i> was spurred by Cond&#233;'s desire to learn of her family history, resolving to begin her quest by researching the life of her grandmother. While uncovering the circumstances of Victoire...</I></P></P></p></I></p></p>