Kebede Michael

Kebede Michael (Amharic: ከበደ ሚካኤል; Käbbädä Mikaʾél^?; Nov. 2, 1916–Nov. 12, 1998) is an Ethiopian-born author of both fiction and non-fiction literature. He is widely regarded as one of the most prolific and versatile intellectuals of modern Ethiopia – he was a poet, playwright, essayist, translator, historian, novelist, philosopher, journalist, and government officer. He has produced about ninety published works in several languages, some of which have been translated into foreign languages, and have greatly influenced twentieth-century Ethiopian literature and intellectual thought. He has received ample recognition domestically and internationally, including an Honorary Doctorate from Addis Ababa University. He is well known as one of the mid-twentieth-century Japanizing Ethiopian intellectuals.

Kebede Michael was born on November 2, 1916 in the city of Debre Berhan, in a neighborhood called Gerb Gabriel in the Semien Shewa Zone of the Amhara Regioncentral Ethiopia. Soon after his birth, his father, Ato Aytaged, left him and his mother, Woyzero Atsede Michael. Hence Kebede Michael came to be known under his mother’s last name, instead of his father’s as prescribed by the standard Ethiopian naming tradition.

Kebede Michael attended Ethiopian Orthodox Täwaḥədo Church education, starting at a very young age. It is reported that his grandmother, Woyzero WoleteGabriel, took him to his first day of church education at the age of four at his nearby Gerb Gabriel church. His mother is said to have instilled a sense of ethics in him by raising him with Christian values, and telling him stories from the Bible. By age nine, he had acquired learned much of the traditional church education and had good mastery of the church language Ge’ez. In about 1924, when his mother and grandmother moved to Arsi in the Oromia Region in Ethiopia for work, he went instead to Addis Ababa where he joined the Catholic Cathedral School as a boarding student. His mother moved back to Addis Ababa in 1929, so fourteen-year-old Michael moved back in with his mother, and enrolled in the best boarding school in Ethiopia at the time, Alliance Éthio-Française School with the help of his mother’s brother (his uncle) Ato Seyfu Michael. It is said that he grew tired of the beatings and punishments by teachers at the school, and thus switched to Lazarist Catholic Mission School for some time. Then, when matters at his former school improved, he switched back to Alliance Éthio-Française.

...
Wikipedia