Eritrean literature in the Tigrinya language dates, as far as is currently known, from the late 19th century. It was initially encouraged by European missionaries, but suffered from the general repression of Eritrean culture under Fascist rule in the 1920s and 30s. The earliest published works were primarily translations or collections of traditional poems, fables and folktales, but the renaissance of Eritrean culture promoted by the British administrators after 1942 included the appearance of the first novels in Tigrinya.
Read more about Eritrean Literature: Origins, First Publications, Fascism, Renaissance
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“Woe to that nation whose literature is cut short by the intrusion of force. This is not merely interference with freedom of the press but the sealing up of a nation’s heart, the excision of its memory.”
—Alexander Solzhenitsyn (b. 1918)