Baalu ​​Girma

Baalu ​​Gırma (1938 or 1939, Sunne Village, Illubaber Province - 1984, Addis Ababa ) is an Ethiopian prose writer, journalist, statesman and public figure. He wrote in the Amharic language . He introduced the word "Oromai" into the Amharic language.

Born in the family of an Indian carpenter who came to Ethiopia to earn money, and his Ethiopian mother. The father left the family and returned to India when Baal was still a child. He received his secondary education first in his native province, and then in Addis Ababa (for excellent study he received a scholarship to study at the best school), after leaving school he entered Addis Ababa University, graduating with a degree in journalism. Soon after, he went to continue his studies in the United States of America , where he received a master's degree in journalism. Returning to Ethiopia in the early 1960s, until 1974 he worked first in the Ethiopian Ministry of Information, then as a journalist for Manet, Addis Reporter, and the Addis Zeman newspaper.

After the 1974 revolution, he entered the inner circle of Mengistu Haile Mariam , becoming his friend and closest adviser and receiving the position of Deputy Minister of Information. It is known that Baalu ​​Girma wrote for him texts of public speeches, speeches and articles on political topics, was the organizer of various government conferences. However, two years later, in 1976, he began to openly express his disagreement with the policy of Derg (Ethiopian military junta), including with respect to the Eritrean issue, in 1982 setting forth his position in the next novel. On February 14, 1984, shortly after the last press was banned, Baalu ​​Girma disappeared. The fact of his murders by agents of the Ethiopian special services was disclosed only in January 2003, but the exact date of death is still unknown. Moreover, in 2013 there was a message (of dubious reliability) that he could still be alive ^[2] .

In his early novels - “Beyond the Horizon” (“Kadlis Balashyr”, 1970), “Bell of Conscience” (“Ekhilina dyuvul”, 1974) - are devoted to the life of the Ethiopian intelligentsia in the last years of the Ethiopian empire. In these works, Baalu ​​Gyrma actively encouraged readers to reorganize society and participate in it by society, criticizing the passive-contemplative position. In his most famous novel, The Call of the Red Star (Eckei Kokeb Teri, 1980), and the novel Writer (Derashi), written in the same year, which were translated into Russian and published in the USSR , he expressed full agreement with the ideas of the Ethiopian revolution and the socialist development of Ethiopia. The disagreement with the regime’s policy that soon came to him was reflected in the 1982 novel Oromai, dedicated to the war in Eritrea , the title of this work was the invention of Baal Girma himself, a kind of neologism that can be freely translated as “It's time to end”. Soon after its first publication, this novel, which exposed the country's government in an extremely unfavorable light, was banned by censorship. Critics noted the psychological reliability of the character images created by him in the novels, the fascination of the plot, the expressiveness of the language. The writer's work was an important stage in the development of Ethiopian national literature and literature in the 20th century.