The Story of the Cannibal Woman A Novel

This new novel by the 2005 Hurston Wright Legacy winner is full of the wit, irony and mystery that she has become known for. Part murder mystery, part send-up of stereotypic expatriate communities of interracial, intercultural couples, this wickedly smart story centres on a black French Caribbean painter and her British college professor husband who have lived in the US, Japan and South Africa. Rosalie and her husband, Stephen, live in post-apartheid Capetown, a city where violent and petty crimes are familiar occurrences. This is the story of a husband who takes a night walk to buy a pack of cigarettes, and never returns. Not only is his widow left to cope with beginning a new life; she is obliged to solve the mystery of what appears, on the surface, to be a senseless murder.

Maryse Condé is the award-winning author of twelve novels, including Crossing the Mangrove, Segu, Who Slashed Celanire's Throat?, and I, Tituba: Black Witch of Salem. She lives in New York and Montebello, Guadeloupe.