Tsegaye Gabre-Medhin (; 17 August 1936 – 25 February 2006) was an Ethiopian poet and novelist. His novels and poets evoke retrospective narratives, fanciful epics, and nationalistic cannonations. Tsegay is considered to be one of the most novelist along with Baalu Girma and Haddis Alemayehu, his books become successful in commercial sales and in even academic thesis. His works solely based in Amharic and English. Biography Tsegaye Gabre-Medhin was born in Bodaa village, near Ambo, Ethiopia, some 120 km from the capital Addis Ababa. He is part Amhara and part Oromo. As many Ethiopian boys do, he also learned Ge'ez, the ancient language of the church, which is an Ethiopian equivalent of Latin. He also helped the family by caring for cattle. He was still very young when he began to write plays while at the local elementary school. One of those plays, King Dionysus and the Two Brothers, was staged in the presence, among others, of Emperor Haile Selassie. Gabre-Medhin later attended the prestigious British Council-supported General Wingate school – named after British officer Orde Wingate. He subsequently attended the Commercial school in Addis Ababa, where he won a scholarship to Blackstone School of Law in Chicago in 1959. In 1960 he travelled to Europe to study experimental drama at the Royal Court Theatre in London and the Comédie-Française in Paris. Upon returning to Ethiopia, he devoted himself to managing and developing the Ethiopian National Theater – which institution staged an impressive memorial for its former director. During this time Gabre-Medhin travelled widely; he attended the first UNESCO-organised World Festival of Black Arts in Dakar, Senegal, and the in Algiers. In 1966, at the age of only 29, he was awarded his country's highest literary honour, the Haile Selassie I Prize for Amharic Literature, joining the ranks of such distinguished previous recipients as Kebede Michael. The prize earned him the title of Laureate, by which he has ever since been known. Following the Ethiopian revolution of 1974, Gabre-Medhin was appointed for a short time as vice-minister of culture and sports, and was active in setting up Addis Ababa University department of Theatre Arts. In 1984 he wrote an extended, and very poetical, essay "Footprints in Time", which appeared in large format with photographs by the Italian photographer Alberto Tessore. It traced Ethiopian history from the prehistoric time of Lucy, the first-known hominid that had recently been found in the