Sebhat Guèbrè-Egziabhér

Sehbat Guèbrè-Egziabhér is a writer and Intellectuel Ethiopia N born in 1928, in the province of the Tigré. One of its works, the Nights of Addis-Abeba , is the first novel translated of the Amharique into French.

Biography

Having led studies in a Swedish mission then to the university of Addis-Abeba, Sebhat goes thereafter to Washington, of 1960 with 1961, where it considers during a time to become librarian and where it undertakes a first outline, in English, of a Romance on the night life in the Ethiopian capital. But it gives up quickly this work in English language, after a reading of texts of an Ethiopian writer, whom it recognizes like a mentor : Dagnatchäw Wärqu (1936 - 1944). This last proved in its writings that the amharic language was appropriate very well for the expression of the aspects of the modern life.

Profiting from a purse of UNESCO, Sehbat goes in France, with Aix-en-Provence, of 1962 with 1964. It studies there the Sociologie and the Philosophie, and discovers the European literature there: Zola, Dostoïevski in particular but also Villon, Rabelais, Dickens or Tolstoï, Freud, Proust, Evelyn Waugh and Mark Twain.

An innovative and committed writer

Polyglot, Sehbat returns in his native land in the middle of the Années 1960, period of effervescence in the consciences coeds. In Addis, it takes part in the cultural review Mennen , launched by the emperor Hailé Sélassié following the death of the empress in 1961.

Under the Derg (revolutionary committee, as from July 1974), Sehbat is requisitioned, with three other well-read men, to translate into amharic the texts of Karl Marx, of which the Capital .

According to Reidulf Molvaer, Sehbat Guèbrè-Egziabhér is a “unpublishable author” but also the “favorite of the Ethiopian writers”. Disturbing by the vocabulary which it employs, the reality which it tells, outgoing beaten paths of the literature of court, Sehbat is perceived in Ethiopia like “the Author” par excellence (ደራሲው).

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