Abe Gubegna

Abe Gubegna (Amharic: አቤ ጉበኛ; 1 July 1933 – 10 February 1980) was an Ethiopian writer.

His name is sometimes spelled "Abbé" or "Abbie".

He published eight novels, five plays, three collections of poetry, and translated several biographies of world leaders as well as other works.

Abe mainly wrote in Amharic, but two of his books were written in English.

Abe Gubegna was born in Korench Abo, Achefer woreda, near Bahir Dar.

His mother was Yigardu Balay, and his father, Gubegna Ambaye, was a farmer.

He was one of 11 children in the family.

He went to church schools for 12 years, first in his village and then in Gojjam and Begemder.

There he learnt Ge'ez and a style of poetry called qene.

Abe then briefly served as an administrator in the church school in his own village, taking the title merigeta.

He then attended a government school in Dangila before moving to Addis Ababa.

Between 1956 and 1977 he published over 20 books and numerous newspaper articles.

Many of his books sold well and Abe became well known, if controversial.

Fellow author Mengistu Lemma regarded him as ‘a hard working writer who has the distinction of having authored the first best sellers in the history of modern Amharic literature’ but his earnings remained low, and he was often in debt.

Eventually, he returned to Bahir Dar and started a wholesale textile business, but debts to his printers remained at the time of his death.

የሮም አወዳደቅ (The Fall of Rome) is Abe's first play, although it was never staged.

It portrays how the nobility's extravagance and self-indulgence brings about the fall of Rome through their exploitation of the poor.

It is unclear whether he completed his secondary education, but in 1958 or 1959 he began work as a journalist at the Ministry of Information before moving to the Ministry of Health.

Abe resigned from government service to try and make a living from writing.

This was rare among Amharic writers, and most others maintained other jobs.

The play was published two months before the attempted 1960 coup and was clearly written to mirror the Ethiopia that Abe saw under Haile Selassie.

የፓትሪስ ሉሙምባ አሳዛኝ አሟሟት (The Tragic Death of Patrice Lumumba) was Abe's next play.

In his preface Abe notes that the publication of several his books was being delayed, which most likely refers to the government censorship, but that he had no patience to wait any longer for this one.

The play condemns the plot against Lumumba in the Republic of the Congo.

Abe portrays Lumumba as a freedom fighter and as a martyr to his people, while blaming the racism of Western governments and the complicity of Joseph Kasa-Vubu and Moïse Tshombe for his assassination.

The play ends by calling for the execution of Kasa-Vubu and Tshombe.

It appeared at a time when Ethiopia was attempting to mediate rifts that the Congolese crisis had created at the Third All African Peoples’ Conference in Cairo and was therefore censored heavily.

In 1962 Abe published አልወለድም (I Will Not Be Born).

The novel was banned and burnt after 800 copies were sold.

The story is set in the fictional kingdom of Izraelos.

The use of a fictional setting, which Abe returns to in many of his works, appears to have been an unsuccessful attempt to avoid government censorship.

The unnamed central character, still in his mother's womb, tells her he will not be born into a world without freedom.

Despite his efforts, she delivers her baby in hospital, only for him to criticise the doctors for bringing him into a world of suffering.

As an adult he finds employment and incites the workers to strike before being fired by his employers.

He goes on to establish an agricultural utopia with his friends, which is destroyed when a government official lays claim to their land.

As this occurs the government is overthrown in a military coup.

The new government adopts a more progressive approach, before quickly becoming more oppressive than the previous regime.

He then becomes involved in a revolution that overthrows the military.

He declines a role in the new government and returns to his utopia.

But he is soon accused of sedition, arrested and sentenced to death.