12 Facts About Tsegaye Gabre-Medhin

Tsegaye Gabre-Medhin was an Ethiopian poet and novelist.

Tsegaye Gabre-Medhin's books have been successful in commercial sales and in even academic theses.

Tsegaye Gabre-Medhin's works are solely based in Amharic and English.

Tsegaye Gabre-Medhin was still very young when he began to write plays while at the local elementary school.

Tsegaye Gabre-Medhin subsequently attended the Commercial school in Addis Ababa, where he won a scholarship to Blackstone School of Law in Chicago in 1959.

Tsegaye Gabre-Medhin was no less insistent that Britain should return the manuscripts, crosses, tents and other loot taken from Emperor Tewodros' mountain citadel.

Tsegaye Gabre-Medhin always believed in the unity of the Ethiopian people and felt that this by far transcended purely political matters of the day.

Tsegaye Gabre-Medhin died in Manhattan, where he had moved in 1998 to receive treatment for kidney disease.

Tsegaye Gabre-Medhin was buried in Addis Ababa at Holy Trinity Cathedral church, where the body of Emperor Haile Selassie lies.

Tsegaye Gabre-Medhin was proud of Ethiopia's long history of independence and her unique cultural heritage.

Tsegaye Gabre-Medhin insisted emphatically that his country needed heroes, and used the theatre deliberately to teach his compatriots to respect the Ethiopian heroes of their past.

Besides these compositions, Tsegaye Gabre-Medhin translated Shakespeare, as well as Moliere's Tartuffe and Le Medecin malgre lui, as well as Bertolt Brecht's Mother Courage.