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Swahili literature is, generally speaking, literature written in the Swahili language particularly by Swahili people of the East African coast and the neighboring islands. It may also refer to literature written by people who write in Swahili language. It is an offshoot of the Bantu culture.
The first literary works date back to the beginning of the 18th century, when all Swahili literature was written in the Arabic script. Jan Knappert considered the translation of Arabic poem Hamziya from the year 1652 to be the earliest Swahili written text. However, starting the 19th century, missionaries and orientalists introduced the Roman alphabet for recording Swahili language.
Utenzi or utend̠i is a form of narrative poetry in Swahili. Its name derives from the fact that it usually describes heroic deeds (utendi, meaning 'act' or 'deed', is derived from the Swahili verb ku-tenda 'to do'). Well-known examples of utenzi are the Utendi wa Tambuka by Bwana Mwengo (one of the earliest known literary works in Swahili, dated 1728), the Utenzi wa Shufaka, and the Utenzi wa vita vya Uhud (the epic of the battle of Uhud) compiled around 1950 by Haji Chum.See Chum & Lambert (1962). Reciting utenzi is a popular pastime on weddings and other ceremonies and feasts; often, specialized narrators are invited to do this.Knappert 1977:31. Utenzi verse form consists of four-line stanzas, with each line having eight syllables. The last syllables of the first three lines rhyme with each other, while the fourth line has a rhyme that is constant throughout the whole of the epic. This last rhyme thus serves to tie all stanzas of the epic together. Within a line of eight syllabes there are no further meter requirements. The verse form can be illustrated by the first stanza of the Utend̠i wa TambukaIn Knappert's Latin transcription, based on the Arabic manuscript U, as found in Knappert 1977:32.):
:Bisimillahi kut̠ubu :yina la Mola Wahhabu :Arraḥamani eribu :na Arraḥimu ukyowa
The first three lines all end in -bu. The last syllable of the fourth line ends in the vowel a, and this sound is found at the end of every stanza of the poem. When recited, this last syllable is sustained for some time and given emphasis.
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Utend̠i wa Tambuka or Utenzi wa TambukaThe symbol d̠ is a transliteration of the Arabic for the Swahili sound dh (). Often this sound is written simply z, hence the different spellings. ("The Story of Tambuka"), also known as Kyuo kya Hereḳali (the book of Heraclius), is an epic poem in the Swahili language dated 1728. It is one of the earliest known documents in Swahili.
Known by various titles in English, including 'The Book of the Battle of Tambuka' and 'The Story of Heraclius', the story recounts numerous events of the Byzantine-Arab Wars and Byzantine-Ottoman Wars between the Muslims and Romans (the contemporary name for the Byzantines). The Byzantines were represented by the Emperor of the Byzantine Empire, Heraclius. The story covers a period from 628 (the Battle of Mu'tah) to 1453 (the Fall of Constantinople).Knappert 1977:8. 'Tambuka' is the Swahili rendering of Tabuk, a city located in the north-western Saudi-Arabia.
Nigeria has produced many prolific writers. Many have won accolades for their writing abilities, including Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, Ken Saro-Wiwa, Cyprian Ekwensi, Buchi Emecheta, Elechi Amadi and Ben Okri.
Critically acclaimed writers of a younger generation include Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Francis Ohanyido, Sefi Atta, Helon Habila, Helen Oyeyemi, Sarah Ladipo Manyika.
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African literature refers to the literature of and for the African peoples. As George Joseph notes on the first page of his chapter on African literature in Understanding Contemporary Africa, while the European perception of literature generally refers to written letters, the African concept includes oral literature. George, Joseph, "African Literature" ch. 12 of Understanding Contemporary Africa p. 303
As George Joseph continues, while European views of literature often stressed a separation of art and content, African awareness is inclusive:
:"Literature" can also imply an artistic use of words for the sake of art alone. Without denying the important role of aesthetics in Africa, we should keep in mind that, traditionally, Africans do not radically separate art from teaching. Rather than write or sing for beauty in itself, African writers, taking their cue from oral literature, use beauty to help communicate important truths and information to society. Indeed, an object is considered beautiful because of the truths it reveals and the communities it helps to build. ibid p. 304
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Utenzi wa Shufaka (Swahili: "Poem of Mercifulness") is an utenzi (classical narrative poem) in Swahili literature. It is composed of 285 stanzas of four lines of eight-syllables each. The poet-narrator of utenzi offers details of his lineage but never identifies himself.
The only old manuscript of the poem known is held in the library of the German Oriental Society in Halle. This copy, which is written in Arabic script, was sent by Ludwig Krapf from Africa (most probably, German East Africa) in 1854. The poem was published in 1887, followed by a Roman script transliteration in 1894 by Carl Gotthilf Büttner. Jan Kappert offered the first English translation in 1967, though he also introduced a number of significant mistranslations.
The original title is Chuo cha Utenzi ("A book of poetry in utenzi meter"). This was changed by Büttner to a title he felt was more descriptive.
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Bitugi Matundura Kyallo Wadi Wamitila Mbwenda Mbatiah
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This category includes works of literature by Senegalese writers.
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African Writers Series has been published by Heinemann since 1962. The series has been a vehicle for some of the most important African writers, ensuring an international voice to literary masters including Chinua Achebe, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Steve Biko, Ama Ata Aidoo, Nadine Gordimer, Buchi Emecheta and Okot p'Bitek.
Founded in 1962, it provided a forum for many post independence African writers, and provided texts with which many African universities could begin to redress the colonial bias then prominent in the teaching of literature. The books were designed for classroom use, issuing works solely in paperback to make them affordable for African students.
The idea of the series came from Heinemann executive Alan Hill. The first series editor was the Nigerian Chinua Achebe – who became one of Africa's most famous writers. Achebe focused first on West African writers, but soon the series branched out, publishing the works of Ngugi wa Thiong'o in East Africa, and Nadine Gordimer in South Africa. Achebe left the editorship in 1972.
After a fairly prosperous beginning, the series faced difficulties that mirrored those which faced the continent as a whole. By the mid-1980s, only one or two new titles a year were being published, and much of the back catalogue had fallen out of print. By the early 1990s, however, the series had begun to revive, having recently branched out to publish new work, to republish texts originally published in local release, and to publishing translated works.
Oríkì, or praise poetry, is a cultural phenomenon among the Yòrùbá-speaking people of West Africa.
Libya is a North African country. Arabs are the most populous ethnic group and various kinds of Arab music are popular such as Andalusi music, locally known as Maluf, Chabi and Arab classical music.
The Tuareg live in the southern, Saharan part of the country, and have their own distinctive folk music. There is little or no pop music industry. Among the Tuareg, women are the musicians. They play a one-stringed violin called an anzad, as well as a variety of drums.
Two of the most famous musicians of Libya are Ahmed Fakroun and Mohammed Hassan.
Among Libyan Arabs, instruments include the zokra (a bagpipe), flute (made of bamboo), tambourine, oud (a fretless lute) and darbuka, a goblet drum held sideways and played with the fingers. Complication clapping is also common in folk music.
Travelling Bedouin poet-singers have spread many popular songs across Libya. Among their styles is huda, the camel driver's song, the rhythm of which is said to mimic the feet of a walking camel.
This is a list of prominent and notable writers from Africa, including poets, novelists, children's writers, essayists, and scholars, listed by country.
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This is a list of famous Senegalese people for whom there is an article in Wikipedia. Only add names here if the person has their own article on Wikipedia, please. Anything else will be removed.
Out of Africa is a memoir by Isak Dinesen, a nom de plume used by the Danish author Baroness Karen von Blixen-Finecke. The book, first published in 1937, recounts events of the seventeen years when Blixen made her home in Kenya, then British East Africa. The book is a lyrical meditation on Blixen’s life on her coffee plantation, as well as a tribute to some of the people who touched her life there. It is also a vivid snapshot of African colonial life in the last decades of the British Empire. Blixen wrote the book in English and then translated it into Danish.
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This is a list of Kenyan artists. *Duncan Bundi *Jimmy Ogonga painter, sculptor, multi-media artist *Odhiambo Siangla painter and sculptor *Serah Mwihaki actress and TV producer *Binyavanga Wainaina author *Eric Wainaina musician *Didge R'n'B singer and radio presenter *Razini (msanii!) - Hip Hop Artist *Jua Cali Genge Artist *Grace Mugure musician *Yvonne Owuor author *Muthoni Garland author *Richard Onyango painter *Kwame Nyon'go - animator www.kwamenyongo.com *Wilfred Ndirangu - 2D Animator *Irene Zaidi sculptor *Uman Moh'd Warsame *Allan deSouza *Ken wa Maria *Joseph Hellon jazz artist, multi-instrumentalist - www.soundafrica.net *Maroon Commandos band - www.soundafrica.net *Orch. Super Mazembe band - www.soundafrica.net *Kidum singer & multi instrumetalst - www.soundafrica.net *Ambasada artist - www.soundafrica.net *Iddi singer - www.soundafrica.net *Diwani Nzaro band - www.soundafrica.net *Group TK band - www.soundafrica.net *Mighty King Kong band - www.soundafrica.net *Notorious B.I.G Rap Artist *George Manga - Graphic Artist
matasyo kagwa - actor storyteller director
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There are records of Sudanese literature dating from the 15th century, but it wasn't until the 16th and 17th centuries that a distinctive Sudanese literature began to appear . The ruler of Sudan, and the Songhai Empire at the time, Askia the Great was a patron of literature . According to the 16th century Moroccan explorer, Leo Africanus, writing in 1510 CE,
:In Timbuctoo there are numerous judges, doctors and clerics, all receiving good salaries from the king. He pays great respect to men of learning. There is a big demand for books in manuscript, imported from Barbary (North Africa). More profit is made from the book trade than from any other line of business.
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Season of Migration to the North (Arabic: موسم الهجرة إلى الشمال ) is a classic post-colonial Sudanese novel by the late novelist Al-Tayyib Salih. Originally published in Arabic in 1966, it has since been translated into English and French.
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Jean-Baptiste Nguema Abessolo, also seen as J.-B. Abessolo-Nguema, (born 15 February 1932) is an educator and writer of Gabon.
Born at Oyem, he was educated there and at Libreville, then studied educational administration at École des Cadres Superieures in Brazzaville and the École Normale Supérieure at Mouyondzi.
He was a school administrator and inspector of primary schools from 1952 to 1982, interrupted only by a year in Paris (1960-61). In December 1982 he became director-general of the International Center for Bantu Civilizations in Libreville.
Abessole has published a number of short stories in both Gabon and France.
Ahmadou Kourouma, (November 24, 1927 – December 11, 2003) was an Ivorian novelist.
The eldest son of a distinguished Malinké family, Ahmadou Kourouma was born in 1927 in Côte d'Ivoire. Raised by his uncle, he initially pursued studies in Bamako, Mali. From 1950 to 1954, when his country was still under French colonial control, he participated in French military campaigns in Indochina, after which he journeyed to France to study mathematics in Lyon.
Kourouma returned to his native Côte d'Ivoire after it won its independence in 1960, yet he quickly found himself questioning the government of Félix Houphouët-Boigny. After brief imprisonment, Kourouma spent several years in exile, first in Algeria (1964-1969), then in Cameroon (1974-1984) and Togo (1984-1994), before finally returning to live in Côte d'Ivoire.
Determined to speak out against the betrayal of legitimate African aspirations at the dawn of independence, Kourouma was drawn into an experiment in fiction, his first novel, Les soleils des indépendances (The Suns of Independence, 1970). Les soleils des indépendances contains a critical treatment of post-colonial governments in Africa. Twenty years later, his second book Monnè, outrages et défis, a history of a century of colonialism, was published. In 1998, he published En attendant le vote des bêtes sauvages, {translated as Waiting for the Wild Beasts to Vote), a satire of post colonial Africa in the style of Voltaire in which a griot recounts the story of a tribal hunter's transformation into a dictator, inspired by president Gnassingbé Eyadéma of Togo. In 2000, he published Allah n'est pas obligé (translated asAllah is Not Obliged), a tale of an orphan who becomes a child soldier when traveling to visit his aunt in Liberia.
At the outbreak of civil war in Côte d'Ivoire in 2002, Kourouma stood against the war as well as against the concept of Ivorian nationalism, calling it "an absurdity which has led us to chaos." President Laurent Gbagbo accused him of supporting rebel groups from the north of the country.
In France, each of Ahmadou Kourouma's novels has been greeted with great acclaim, sold exceptionally well, and been showered with prizes including Prix Renaudot in year 2000 and The Prix Goncourt des Lycéens for Allah n'est pas obligé . In the English-speaking world, Kourouma has yet to make much of an impression: despite some positive reviews, his work remains largely unknown outside college classes in African fiction.
At the time of his death, he was working on a sequel to Allah n'est pas obligé, entitled Quand on refuse on dit non (translated roughly as When One Disagrees, One Says No), in which the protagonist of the first novel, a child soldier, is demobilized and returns to his home in Côte d'Ivoire, in which a new regional conflict has arisen.
Elspeth Joscelin Huxley CBE (July 23, 1907 - January 10, 1997) was a polymath, writer, journalist, broadcaster, magistrate, environmentalist, farmer, and government advisor.<ref name="nyt1997">Lyall, Sarah. "Elspeth Huxley, 89, Chronicler of Colonial Kenya, Dies," New York Times. January 18, 1997.</ref> She wrote 30 books; but she is best known for her lyrical books The Flame Trees of Thika and The Mottled Lizard which were based on her experiences growing up in a coffee farm in Colonial Kenya. Her husband, Gervas Huxley, was a grandson of Thomas Huxley and a cousin of Aldous Huxley.<ref name="ALownie">"Elspeth Huxley, a Biography", Andrew Lownie Literary Agency Ltd, 2006, webpage: ALownie-Huxley.</ref>
Princess Esther Kamatari (born 1951) is a writer, model, and exiled Burundian princess.
Esther Kamatari grew up in Burundi as a member of the royal family. Following independence in 1962, the king was overthrown in a military coup d'etat, and the monarchy abolished in 1966. Kamatari fled the country in 1964 after her father's assassination and settled in Paris, where she became a model. An attempt to re-establish the kingdom ended with the murder of King Ntare V in 1972.
Burundi's post-independence history has been dominated by tensions between the Hutu majority and the Tutsi minority. The civil war of the 1990s in Burundi and conflicts with neighbouring countries and the plight of thousands of child-victims of war led her to become involved with the Association of the People of Burundi in France. In Burundi she is known for her humanitarian work.
A peace brokered by South Africa has made elections possible in Burundi, and Esther Kamatari and her Abahuza party, which means "bringing people together," will run on the platform of restoration of the monarchy.
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Mwana Kupona binti Msham (born on Pate Island, died c. 1865) was a Swahili poetess of the 19th century, author of a poem known as Utendi wa Mwana Kupona ("the book of Mwana Kupona"), which is one of the most well-known works of early Swahili literature.
Relatively little is known about her life. Her grandson Muhammed bin Abdalla MS 53508c reported in the 1930s that Mwana Kupona was born in Pate, and that she was the last wife of sheikh Bwana Mataka, ruler of Siu (or Siyu), with whom she had two children. Mataka died in 1856; two years later, Mwana Kupona wrote her famous poem, dedicated to her 14 year old daughter Mwana Heshima. Mwana Kupona died around 1865 of womb hemorrhaging.
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Libyan literature has historically been very politicized. The Libyan literary movement can be traced to the Italian occupation of the early 20th century. Sulaiman al-Barouni, an important figure of the Libyan resistance to the Italian occupation, wrote the first book of Libyan poetry as well as publishing a newspaper called The Muslim Lion.<ref name="ham"></ref>
After the Italian defeat in World War II, the focus of Libyan literature shifted to the fight for independence. The 1960s were a tumultuous decade for Libya, and this is reflected in the works of Libyan writers. Social change, the distribution of oil-wealth and the Six-Day War were a few of the most discussed topics. Following the 1969 coup d'etat which brought Muammar al-Gaddafi to power, the government established the Union of Libyan Writers. Thereafter, literature in the country took a much less antagonistic approach towards the government, more often supporting government policies than opposing.<ref name="ham"/>
As very little Libyan literature has been translated, few Libyan authors have received much attention outside of the Arab World. Possibly Libya's best-known writer, Ibrahim Al-Koni, is all but unknown outside the Arab-speaking world.<ref name="ham"/>
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Abdillahi Suldaan Mohammed Timacade was arguably the most prominent Somali poet in his times. He was born in 1920 in a small village called Galooley, near Gabiley in North West of Somaliland. After moving to Ethiopia and Djibouti in the 40 and 50s he came back to Gabiley and took part of the independence movements against the British colony.
Timacade was famous with numerous poems and his special euphoric poem during the celebration on 26 June 1960 when Somaliland recovered its independence from the British.
In his 50s, Timacade suffered from illness on his throat and was taken to Jomo Kenyatta Hospital in Nairobi, Kenya where he had gone through a number of treatments.
Timacade died on 6 February 1973 in Kalabaydh and buried in Gabiley.
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Kenyan literature describes literature which comes from the African country of Kenya. Kenya has a long oral and written literary tradition, primarily in English and Swahili, the two official languages of the country.
One of the best known pieces of Kenyan literature is Utendi wa Tambuka, which translates to The Story of Tambuka. Written by a man named Mwengo at the court of the Sultan of Pate, the epic poem is one of the earliest known documents in Swahili, being written in the year 1141 of the Islamic calendar, or 1728 A.D.
African literature had long been an exclusively oral tradition, and the writing down of stories only began with European colonization.
Important Kenyan writers include Muyaka bin Haji al-Ghassaniy, Kupona Mwana, Grace Ogot, Asenath Odaga, Meja Mwangi, Hilary Ngweno, Margaret Ogola and R. Mugo Gatheru. Probably the most well known Kenyan author is Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o.
Thiong'o's first novel, Weep Not, Child, was the first novel in English to be published by an East African. Undoubtedly, Thiong'o is best known for his novel, A Grain of Wheat.
In recent years the world of literature in Kenya has slowly evolved, letting in new, contemporary writers such as Onduko Bw'Atebe, whose book Verdict of Death, won the Inaugral Wahome Mutahi Writer's Award, Binyavanga Wainaina who won the Caine Prize in 2002 with his story Discovering Home, Yvonne Awour and Muthoni Garland who were also nominated for the Cinae Prize.
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Based on a true story''To Thabiti Asukele—On the Passing of Asa Hilliard'', Wilson J. Moses Ph. D, Bai T. Moore's Murder in the Cassava Patch is Liberia's best-known novel. Published by Ducor Publishing House (Monrovia) in 1968, it remains required reading for every Liberian high school student, and is widely regarded as the one real Liberian literary classic J. Kpanneh Doe in ''The Perspective'':"The writing of novels is rather new to the Liberian literary genre. Except for "Murder in the Cassava Patch," a Liberian literary classic, there aren't many others that can be grouped or classified as Liberian literature, or for that matter, constituting a literary tradition." in a very small literary traditionEssay (translated into French) on ''The Liberian government and creative fiction'' by John Victor Singler, originally from ''Research in African Literatures'' 2 (4), 1980..
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The Book of Not is a novel by Zimbabwean author Tsitsi Dangarembga. The novel is semi-autobiographical, set in colonial Rhodesia. The story is told from the perspective of Tambudzai, a young black girl living in Rhodesia. In The Book of Not, Tambu's story continues from when it previously left off in the prequel, Nervous Conditions.
Marie-Thérèse Catherine Atangana Assiga Ahanda is a Cameroonian novelist and chemist and the paramount chief of the Ewondo people. Ahanda is the daughter of Charles Atangana—paramount chief of the Ewondo and Bane peoples under the German and French colonial regimes—by his second wife, Julienne Ngonoa.Ahanda. Ahanda is married and has four children and several grandchildren.<ref name="Volet">Volet.</ref>
Ahanda worked for a few years in the science department of the University of Yaoundé. She then moved to the Republic of the Congo with her husband. They returned to Cameroon, and Ahanda was selected as a delegate to the National Assembly of Cameroon, a position she held from 1983 to 1988. Ahanda became the Ewondo paramount chief sometime before 1996.<ref name="Volet"/> In December 2000, she began the renovation of her father's palace at Efoulan, Yaoundé, a project that would cost an estimated 150,000,000 francs CFA."Le Château Charles Atangana sera enfin sauvé".
Ahanda's writings include a novel, Sociétés africaines et 'High Society': Petite ethnologie de l'arrivisme (African societies and 'High Society': A small ethnology of ambitiousness), published in 1978, and Je suis raciste (I am a racist), published in 1982.<ref name="Volet"/>
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Rwandan literature is a literature both oral and written in Kinyarwanda, or French, particularly by citizens of Rwanda.
Houseboy is a novel in the form of a diary written by Ferdinand Oyono in 1956 in French as Une vie de boy and translated into English in 1966.
Yoruba literature is the spoken and written literature of the Yoruba people, the largest ethno-linguistic group in Nigeria, and in Africa. The Yorùbá language is spoken in Nigeria, Benin, and Togo, as well as in dispersed Yoruba communities throughout the world.
The Wedding of Zein (Arabic: عرس الزين translit: Urs al-zayn) (1969) is a classical Sudanese Arabic novel, written by Al-Tayyib Salih.
The author portrays the life of average villagers in the North of Sudan, which is influenced by Islamic heritage and Sudanese culture. Zein, an eccentric simpleton whom everybody loved yet was scary to look at, lives his simple life full of laughter, humor and craze. Falling in love with Ni'ma, was beyond the villagers' expectations.
Song of Lawino is an epic poem written by Ugandan poet Okot p'Bitek. First published in 1966 in Luo it was quickly translated into other languages, including English. Song of Lawino has become one of the most widely read literary works originating from Sub-Saharan Africa, and has also become a cultural icon in Africa itself, because of its scathing display of how African society was being destroyed by the colonization of Africa
Song of Lawino was originally written in rhyming couplets and had a regular meter. The poem is told from the point of view of Lawino herself in the 1st Person.
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Camara Laye (1928 in Kouroussa, Guinea - 1980 in Dakar, Senegal) was an African writer from Guinea. During his time at college he wrote The Dark Child (L'Enfant noir), a novel based loosely on his own childhood. He would later become a writer of many essays and was a foe of the government of Guinea.
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Tsegaye Gabre-Medhin (17 August 1936—25 February 2006) was Poet Laureate of Ethiopia, as well as a poet, playwright, essayist, and art director.
Born in the highland village of Boda, near Ambo, west of the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, Tsegaye began his education in the heady days in the immediate aftermath of the Italian Fascist occupation, which had ended in 1941. While still at elementary school he wrote a play called "King Dionysus and the Two Brothers" and saw it staged in the presence, among others, of Emperor Haile Selassie.
Tsegaye later attended the prestigious British Council-supported General Wingate school – named after British officer Orde Wingate, who had assisted Ethiopia's liberation in 1941. The budding playwright subsequently joined Addis Ababa's innovative Commercial school, where he won a scholarship to law school in Chicago.
His interests, however soon took him away from both commerce and law, which he considered as necessary, but soul-destroying pursuits. He turned instead to his true loves: poetry and the theatre. In 1960 he travelled to Europe to study experimental drama at the RoyalCourtTheatre in London and the Comédie Française in Paris. On returning to Ethiopia, he devoted himself unreservedly to the development of the country's National Theatre – which institution staged an impressive memorial for its former director.
Besides compositions of his own Tsegaye translated Shakespeare (Hamlet and Othello being the most popular of these works), as well as Moliere's Tartouffe and Doctor Despite Himself, and Bertolt Brecht's Mother Courage.
Tsegaye, in all things a patriot, was proud of Ethiopia's long history of independence, and of her unique cultural heritage. He insisted emphatically that his country needed heroes, and used the theatre deliberately to teach his compatriots to respect the Ethiopian heroes of their past. One of the most widely acclaimed of his plays, Tewodros, commemorates the life of the charismatic Ethiopian emperor of that name. A pioneer reformer and moderniser, he committed suicide in 1868 rather than fall into the hands of a British expeditionary force which had been dispatched against him.
Another of Tsegaye's plays, Petros at the Hour, tells the story of Abuna Petros, an Ethiopian bishop, who accompanied Ethiopia's freedom-fighters in their struggle to resist the Italian fascist occupation. Captured by the enemy on the outskirts of Addis Ababa he was subjected to a trumped-up show trial, which reduces the audience to tears.
Yet another play, the Oda Oak Oracle, a comedy about Ethiopian country life, also enjoyed great popularity, both in Ethiopia and abroad, and was staged in no less than eight countries: Britain, Denmark, Italy, Kenya, Nigeria, Romania, Tanzania, and the United States.
His poems, both in Amharic and English, were also widely read. A score of them, including Prologue to African Conscience and Black Antigone, were published in the Ethiopia Observer in 1965. Another poem, in Amharic, castigated the European nomenclature for the waterfalls of Sudan and Egypt – which totally ignored those of Ethiopia, and caused Tsegaye proudly to refer to the Ethiopian Tissestat, or Blue NileFalls as the "Zero Cataract".
During this time Tsegaye travelled widely; he attended the UNESCO-organised First World Black Festival in Dakar, Senegal, and the Pan-African Cultural Festival in Algiers. In 1966, at the age of only 29, he was awarded his country's highest literary honour: the Haile Selassie I Prize for Amharic Literature – which earned him the title of Laureate, by which he has ever since been known.
Ardent patriot that he was, Tsegaye was insistent that his beloved Ethiopia should be seen in wider, Africanist terms. Befriended by President Léopold Sédar Senghor of Senegal, he took a keen interest in the Négritude movement, and in the Paris-based journal Présence Africaine. He frequently emphasized the African roots of the theatre; and devoted much time to studying ancient Egyptian history – to gain a better knowledge of the overall culture of the NileValley. This led him to make an extensive study of linguistic history of the region, with special emphasis on the relationship between his country's Cushitic and Semitic languages. He was at around this time appointed a Commander of the National Order of Senegal.
Later, after the Ethiopian revolution of 1974 and the fall of Haile Selassie, Tsegaye was appointed for a short time as vice-minister of Culture and Sports, and was active in setting up Addis AbabaUniversity's department of Theatre Arts. In 1984 he wrote an extended, and very poetical, essay "Footprints in Time", which appeared with beautiful photographs by the Italian photographer Alberto Tessore, as a "coffee table" book. It traced Ethiopian history from the prehistoric time of Lucy, the first-known hominid, who had then recently been found in the afar area of eastern Ethiopia.
One of Tsegaye's passionate interests throughout this time was in the struggle to regain Ethiopia's looted treasures. A close friend of Chief Segun Olusola, the Nigerian Ambassador in Addis Ababa, who was a fellow poet, Tsegaye was present when the ambassador agreed to throw his diplomatic pressure behind the popular Ethiopian demand for the return of the Aksum obelisk looted by Fascist Italy on Mussolini's personal orders in 1937. The chief's support marked a turning point in the Aksum Obelisk Return movement.
Tsegaye was no less insistent that Britain should return the manuscripts, crosses, tents and other loot taken – unjustly, as he saw it, from Emperor Tewodros's mountain citadel of Magdala in 1868. Much of this loot is currently in the BritishMuseum and British Library, as well as in Britain's Royal Library in WindsorCastle, which currently holds six remarkably finely illustrated Ethiopian manuscripts.
Tsegaye always believed in the unity of the Ethiopian people and felt that this by far transcended purely political matters of the day. In later years he concerned himself increasingly with questions of peace, human rights and the dignity of humanity. He was elected to the United Poets Laureate International, and received many international awards – the most recent of them from Norway.
Despite his health problems Tsegaye was active – and creative – to the last. Ever true to his African aspirations in 2002 he composed a poem on the continent's cultural heritage, which the newly-established African Union adopted as its anthem; it read:
"All sons and daughters of Africa, flesh of the son and flesh of he sky, Let us make Africa the tree of life."
Unable to return to his native land, which lacked the dialysis facilities on which his life literally depended, Tsegaye remained in close contact with the Ethiopian diaspora by whom he was affectionately referred to as Blattengetta, a title traditionally accorded to the most distinguished of Ethiopian scholars.
Tsegaye Gabre-Medhin, Ethiopia's greatest living playwright, and acclaimed Poet Laureate, died in Manhattan on 26 February. He was 69, and had for several years been prevented from returning to his native land by his need to undergo dialysis treatment in the US.
The Penguin Book of Modern African Poetry, in an earlier 1963 edition Modern Poetry from Africa, was a 1984 poetry anthology edited by Gerald Moore and Ulli Beier. It consists mainly of poems written in English, or French or Portuguese and translated into English; poems written in African languages were included only in authors' translations. The arrangement was by country, and then by date of birth.
The following lists give a categorised overview of notable people from the East African country of Kenya: