[1] The winner was announced on 12 October 2018,[2] the prize being given to the Guadeloupean-French author Maryse Condé, who was praised by the jury as a "grand storyteller [whose] authorship belongs to world literature, describing the ravages of colonialism and the postcolonial chaos in a language which is both precise and overwhelming.

[4][5][6] Following an open invitation to the world, calling for public votes for 47 candidates nominated by Swedish librarians, the New Academy announced that the four finalists for the prize were Maryse Condé, Neil Gaiman, Haruki Murakami, and Kim Thúy.

Fiction and reality overlap each other and people live as much in an imagined world with long and complicated traditions as the ongoing present.

[3] When Condé died in 2024, The Guardian obituary of her noted that she had considered this award an especially important achievement and that she had dedicated the prize to all the people of Guadeloupe, saying: "We are such a small country, only mentioned when there are hurricanes or earthquakes and things like that.

[12] Internationally, reactions were more positive, Alison Flood wrote in The Guardian: "Perhaps the most striking detail of all is found not in the names, but the fine print.