Aimé Césaire
Posted at 7:52AM Monday 21 Apr 2008
Aimé Césaire, the Martinican intellectual and politician who has died aged 94, left his mark in two separate, seemingly contradictory, fields. As a poet, dramatist and essayist, he coined the term "négritude" to define the revolutionary black aesthetic that rallied French-speaking intellectuals in the Caribbean and Africa in the 1930s. His Cahier d'un retour au pays natal (Return to My Native Land), first published in 1939, is considered the undisputed masterpiece of négritude and a poetic milestone of militant anti-colonialism and metaphorical inventiveness.
Obituary in The Guardian
|
More Obituaries
Donald James Wheal 1931-2008
www.booktrade.info
Donald Wheal, better known to fiction fans by his pen name Donald James, was a prolific book and TV writer whose career stretched for over fifty years
Elaine Dundy
www.telegraph.co.uk
Novelist who wrote The Dud Avocado in a vain attempt to save her marriage to Kenneth Tynan
Michael De Larrabeiti
www.telegraph.co.uk
Writer whose Borrible Trilogy about a mutant tribe of child runaways delighted children but shocked their parents
Arturo Vivante
books.guardian.co.uk
Italian-born writer with autobiographical bent
Brian Cox
www.independent.co.uk
English scholar, poet and editor of 'Critical Quarterly' whose Black Papers sparked debate on education
Sean Body
books.guardian.co.uk
His music bookshop, Helter Skelter, became a cultural hub
|
Account Sign-In
|
|
