Guadeloupe-born author Maryse Condé died in hospital in the south of France at the age of 90 early on Tuesday, Agence France Presse, reported citing her husband.
Condé, whose work dealt critically with racism and the lot of black people in the Caribbean, received numerous awards for her work. They included a prize awarded in Sweden in 2018 as an alternative to the Nobel Literature Prize.
Condé's novels include "I, Tituba: Black Witch of Salem" (1986), which tells of an enslaved daughter. Others are: "Tree of Life" (1987), "Windward Heights" (1995) and "Victoire" (2006).
Her "The Gospel According to the New World" was published in the original French in 2021 and translated into English in 2023. It was nominated for the International Booker Prize.
Condé, who spent her later years in the Provence, was born on Guadeloupe, a French overseas department in the Caribbean, in 1937.