Mengistu lemma books

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Mengistu lemma poems
Menghistu Lemma (born August 1925, Addis Ababa, Eth.—died July 1988, Addis Ababa) was an Ethiopian writer whose poetry and plays written in Amharic (the.

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MENGISTU LEMMA

1925 – 1988

LONGING

The train hauled me out of London—
out of the smoke, the smog, the grime,
the filthy mix of soot and dust—
while the train spun fog from the fabric of steam,
clothing the land with its garment
of blessings and punishment,
Yizze kataf, yizze kataf, goes the powerful weaver.
Isn’t it amazing? Life’s a miracle:
escaping the smog through the power of coal!

The carriage was big enough for ten,
but no one was brave enough to open the door
I’d shut fast to keep in the warmth.
Instead, they huddled in the corridor,
unwilling to share the warmth with a black man—
even though coal is black, even though
the wealth of England was forged by black coal.

The train whistled like a washint flute;
haystacks dotted the distant fields,
just like the straw roofs of houses in a village at home. And, in the blink of an eye, I turned into

'a traveller of God' in the meadows of E

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Mengistu Lemma

Ethiopian playwright and poet

Mengistu Lemma (1924–1988) was an Ethiopian playwright and poet.^[1]^[2]

Biography

Mengistu was born in Harar, to Aleqa Lemma Hailu and Wro Abebech Yilma. After undertaking traditional religious studies at the Tiqo Mekane Selassie church where his father was Aleqa (a title given to church leaders), he moved to the capital Addis Ababa due to the transfer of his father to the Qatchane Medhane'alem Church. There he was admitted to Kotebe Qedamawi Haile Selassie School.

In 1948, Mengistu studied in London at the Regent Street Polytechnic before studying economics and political science at the London School of Economics. In the six years he spent in London, he was able to meet and then establish friendship with the famous British playwright George Bernard Shaw.

In 1954, Mengistu returned to Ethiopia and was sent to the embassy of Ethiopia in India as the First Secretary of the Ethiopian Embassy in New Delhi. There he completed his play Telfo Be Kissie (Marriage by Abduction) (1959), which he had

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By Africa in Words Gueston •

AiW Guest Sara Marzagora.

This post is the second in an occasional series of writer profiles, looking especially at those working in African languages. The first post in our series was on Akinwumi Isola.

Mengistu Lemma (1928-1988)

If you ask Amharic speakers about their literary preferences, the response is almost always unanimous. The best Amharic novelist is Haddis Alemayehu and the best poet Tsegaye Gebre-Medhin. Tsegaye also wrote for theatre, and his tragedies are thought to be the finest in Amharic literature – but when it comes to comedies Mengistu Lemma always tops the list of favourite playwrights.

His two most famous plays are T’älfo Bäkise (“Marriage by Abduction”, 1968-69) and Yalačča Gabïčča (“Marriage of Unequals”, 1964-65). They are humorous in tone and the action is dotted with plot twists and comic instances. Yet the two comedies are conceived as something very far from mere entertainment. Mengistu maintained that he was “a realist, not dealing with fantasy but in social criticism”. He used t