Agostinho Neto

The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Neto, Agostinho

 

Born Sept. 17, 1922, in Icolo-e-Bengo, Luanda District, Angola. Major figure of the liberation movement of Angola; poet.

Neto was the son of a Protestant clergyman from the Kimbundu tribe. In 1958 he graduated from the faculty of medicine of the university in Coimbra, Portugal, after which he took part in the Angolan people’s liberation struggle against the Portuguese colonizers. In 1962 he became president of the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), a party that was founded in 1956. In November 1975 he became president of the People’s Republic of Angola. Neto began writing poetry in 1947. He is the author of the collections Poems (1961, in Portuguese) and Dry Eyes (in Italian, 1963; in Portuguese, 1969). He has received the Lotus Prize from the Permanent Bureau of Afro-Asian Writers (1970).

WORKS

In Russian translation:
In Stikhi poetov Afriki. Moscow, 1958.
In Vzgliadom serdtsa. Moscow, 1961.
In Zdes’ i trava roditsia krasnoi. Moscow, 1967.
S sukhimi glazami. Moscow, 1970.

REFERENCES

Nekrasova, L. V. “Poeziia Angoly i Mozambika.” In the collection Literatura stran Afriki. Moscow, 1964.
Riauzova, E. A. Portugaloiazychnye literatury Afriki. Moscow, 1972. [17–1561–2; updated]

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979). © 2010 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.