Novelist, poet, and essayist Patrick Chamoiseau, Belknap Visiting Fellow in the Humanities Council and the Department of French and Italian, has been selected to receive the Lifetime of Excellence in Fiction Award from the Center for Fiction. The award honors “a writer who, through their exceptional body of work, has significantly shaped our culture and perspective.”
Chamoiseau is widely recognized as one of the most important literary figures of the Caribbean. He is the author of “Texaco,” which won the Prix Goncourt – France’s most prestigious literary prize – in 1992. He has written numerous other works of fiction, as well as essays, folktales, screenplays, and a three-volume autobiography.
At Princeton, Chamoiseau is currently co-teaching the graduate seminar “From Slavery to Globalization” with Thomas Trezise (French and Italian).
He will receive the award at the Center for Fiction’s Annual Awards Benefit in New York City on Dec. 10, 2024.
Previous winners of the Lifetime of Excellence in Fiction Award include former Princeton University Professor and 1993 Nobel laureate Toni Morrison, as well as Salman Rushdie, Wole Soyinka, and Kazuo Ishiguro.
