Jean-Joseph Rabearivelo

Jean-Joseph Rabearivelo was born on 4 March 1901, or 1903 according to other sources, in Antananarivo, into a family of the old Merina nobility impoverished by colonisation. He left school early and trained himself, learned French, English and Spanish, corresponded with writers around the world and was a librarian at the Cercle de l'Union, then a proofreader at the Imerina printing house. Displayed by colonial society as a success of assimilation without being admitted into it, deprived in 1937 of the trip to the Paris Universal Exhibition that had been promised him, he died in Antananarivo on 22 June 1937.

In the catalogue 1

• PoetryTranslated from the NightTraduit de la nuitJean-Joseph Rabearivelo · 1935Literature