Public Figures & Cultural Luminaries

Literature & Poetry

25

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Kateb Yacine

كاتب ياسين

Algeria

1929 – 1989 (60 years old)

Algerian literary giant who revolutionized modern Maghrebi literature with his polyphonic masterpiece 'Nedjma' (1956) and pioneered revolutionary popular street theater in Algerian Arabic and Amazigh.

Algiers, Algeria

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Literature & Poetry

6

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Mohamed Cherif Sahli

محمد الشريف ساحلي

Algeria

1906 – 1989 (82 years old)

Influential Algerian historian, philosopher, and ambassador who pioneered the intellectual decolonization of North African history with his 1965 landmark work Décoloniser l'histoire.

Algiers, Algeria

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Literature & Poetry

27

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Nicolas Guillen

Nicolás Cristóbal Guillén Batista

Cuba

1902 – 1989 (87 years old)

Afro-Cuban poet acclaimed as Cuba's National Poet, who incorporated Afro-Cuban son rhythms into Spanish verse (poesia negra) and championed racial equality and anti-imperialism.

Havana, Cuba

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Literature & Poetry

6

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Abdellah Guennoun

عبد الله بن الصبّاح كَنّون

Morocco

1908 – 1989 (80 years old)

Monumental 20th-century Moroccan literary scholar, lexicographer, and nationalist intellectual whose landmark 1938 masterwork An-Nubugh al-Maghribi fi al-Adab al-Arabi proved the independent genius and continuity of Moroccan civilization.

Tangier, Morocco

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Literature & Poetry

0

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Richard Rive

Richard Moore Rive

South Africa

1931-03-01 – 1989-06-04 (58 years old)

Celebrated Cape Town author and Oxford scholar whose iconic novel 'Buckingham Palace, District Six' and 'Emergency' immortalized the vibrant community bulldozed under apartheid.

Cape Town, South Africa

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Literature & Poetry

0

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Baltasar Lopes da Silva

Baltasar Lopes da Silva

Cape Verde

1907-04-23 – 1989-05-28 (82 years old)

Towering Cape Verdean writer, poet, and philologist who co-founded the seminal 'Claridade' literary review and authored 'Chiquinho', the founding novel of Cape Verdean literature.

Mindelo, Cape Verde

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Literature & Poetry

29

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Mouloud Mammeri

مولود معمري

Algeria

1917 – 1989 (71 years old)

Eminent Algerian anthropologist, linguist, and author of 'The Opium and the Stick', whose pioneering codification of Tamazight grammar and Kabyle poetry sparked the Berber Spring of 1980.

Beni Yenni (Tizi Ouzou), Algeria

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Literature & Poetry

0

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Francis Ponge

Francis Ponge

France

1899 – 1988 (89 years old)

Inventive French poet who revolutionized twentieth-century literature with Le Parti pris des choses (Taking the Side of Things, 1942), dedicating dense prose poems to inanimate objects like bread, snails, soap, and pebbles.

Montpellier, France

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Literature & Poetry

28

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Shen Congwen

沈从文

China

1902 – 1988 (85 years old)

Chinese writer celebrated for his lyrical pastoral novella Border Town, who captured the traditional culture and Miao indigenous harmony of rural western Hunan.

Fenghuang (Hunan), China

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Literature & Poetry

0

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Tchicaya U Tam'si

Gerald-Felix Tchicaya

Congo

1931-08-25 – 1988-04-22 (56 years old)

One of modern Africa's greatest poets whose visceral, surrealist French verse collections like 'Epitomé' and 'Le Mauvais Sang' expressed the torment and resilience of the African continent.

Bazancourt, France

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Literature & Poetry

0

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Mikhail Naimy

ميخائيل نعيمة

Lebanon

22 November 1889 – 28 February 1988 (98 years old)

Beloved Lebanese philosopher, poet, and novelist who co-founded the New York Pen League and authored 'The Book of Mirdad'.

Baskinta, Lebanon

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Literature & Poetry

1

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René Char

René Émile Char

France

1907 – 1988 (80 years old)

Colossal Provençal poet and WWII resistance commander code-named 'Capitaine Alexandre' whose aphoristic masterpiece Feuillets d'Hypnos recorded moral defiance in the maquis, praised by Albert Camus as France's greatest living poet.

L'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue (Vaucluse), France

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Literature & Poetry

0

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Mengistu Lemma

Mengistu Lemma

Ethiopia

1924-01-01 – 1988-01-01 (64 years old)

Celebrated Ethiopian playwright and poet whose classic satirical comedies 'Snobbery in Marriage' (Yalacha Gabicha) and 'The Marriage of Unequals' defined modern Amharic dramatic literature.

Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

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Literature & Poetry

0

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Marguerite Yourcenar

Marguerite Antoinette Jeanne Marie Ghislaine Cleenewerck de Crayencour

Belgium

1903 – 1987 (84 years old)

Brussels-born French-Belgian literary giant who wrote Memoirs of Hadrian (1951) and The Abyss (1968), and in 1980 shattered 345 years of male exclusivity by becoming the first woman elected to the Académie Française.

Somesville (Mount Desert Island, Maine), United States

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Literature & Poetry

0

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Gwendolyn MacEwen

Gwendolyn Margaret MacEwen

Canada

1941 – 1987 (46 years old)

Brilliant and enigmatic Toronto poet whose mythopoeic vision and linguistic virtuosity won two Governor General's Awards for The Shadow-Maker (1969) and Afterworlds (1987).

Toronto, Canada

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Literature & Poetry

0

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Dambudzo Marechera

Charles William Dambudzo Marechera

Zimbabwe

1952-06-04 – 1987-08-18 (35 years old)

Iconoclastic cult author whose explosive 1978 novella collection 'The House of Hunger' won the Guardian Fiction Prize and revolutionized African literature with visceral modernist fury.

Harare, Zimbabwe

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Literature & Poetry

27

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Carlos Drummond de Andrade

Carlos Drummond de Andrade

Brazil

1902 – 1987 (84 years old)

Brazilian poet widely considered the most influential Brazilian poet of the twentieth century, whose modernist verses blended introspective irony, social conscience, and linguistic simplicity.

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

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Literature & Poetry

28

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Tawfiq al-Hakim

توفيق الحكيم

Egypt

1898 – 1987 (88 years old)

Pioneering Egyptian dramatist, novelist, and essayist who founded modern Arabic theater with The Sleepers of Ephesus and created the modern novel Return of the Spirit.

Cairo, Egypt

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