https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jul/16/the-wondrous-and-tragic-life-of-ivan-and-ivana-by-maryse-conde-review-a-scurrilous-picaresque

The route to radicalisation is explored in a sharply satirical tale by the winner of the Alternative Nobel

The Wondrous and Tragic Life of Ivan and Ivana is a rollicking, rumbustious and slyly mischievous Candide for our times. Set in Guadeloupe, Mali and France, and written in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris, Maryse Condé’s novel poses with mock solemnity as an investigative quest into how an accused jihadi named Ivan became “radicalised”. Yet the scattergun satire of this scurrilous picaresque takes no prisoners.

Published in French in 2017 as Condé turned 80, and now in Richard Philcox’s English translation, it marks a bold departure in an oeuvre that has roved the Atlantic triangle stealthily rewriting history – and won Condé the “Alternative Nobel” in 2018. Her novels range from the epic Segu (1984), about a west African kingdom doubly besieged by Islam and Europe, and I Tituba (1986), the true story of a West Indian obeah woman caught up in the Salem witch trials in Puritan New England, to Windward Heights (1995), which transposes Emily Brontë to Guadeloupe, where Condé was born.