Writers

Sumerian

William Hallo first dubbed Enheduana as the Shakespeare of Sumerian literature after careful analysis of her brilliant and complex writing style in her most famous poem, nin-me-sara. Like the controversy surrounding Shakespeare as to whether he actually wrote all of the plays attributed to him, not all scholars credit Enheduana as the first named author in literature.

List of En-hedu-Ana's Writings: 

1) nin-me-sar-ra "Queen of countless divine powers" more commonly known as "The Exaltation of Inanna

2) in-nin sa-gur-ra "Stout-hearted Lady" was first translated by Ake Sjoberg, in 1974. 

3) "e-u-nir": is a Collection of 42 Temple Hymns written for the temples of Sumer and Akkad
Enheduana wrote many of them and gathered others to make this collection.

Hebrew

Judah ha-Levi

 C.1075-1141, Jewish rabbi, poet, and philosopher, born in Tudela, Spain. His poems-secular, religious, and nationalist-are filled with a serene and lofty spirit. In his great philosophic work Sefer ha-Kuzari he emphasized the superiority of religious truths, arrived at through intuition, over philosophical and speculative truths, arrived at through logic and reason. In this work he developed a philosophy of history wherein he explains the force of the "divine influence" at work in the world, known first by the patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob), through them by the Jewish people, and ultimately, through the martyrdom of the Jews, by all mankind.

Egypt

Ali Mustafa Musharaffa

Born:  July 11 1898

Died:   January 6, 1725

Achievements:  Musharaffa is a physicist and the first Dean of the faculty of science who later become the vice-president of Cairo University. He is the first scientist to propose that bombs could be made hydrogen and first to conduct research on the measurement of space. He is the founder of the Translation Department in Cairo University.

Indian

Rabindranath Tagore

Born: May 7, 1861

Died: August 7, 1941
Achievements: Rabindranath Tagore became the first Asian to became Nobel laureate when he won Nobel Prize for his collection of poems, Gitanjali, in 1913; awarded knighthood by the British King George V; established Viswabharati University; two songs from his Rabindrasangit canon are now the national anthems of India and Bangladesh.

 Premchad

 Born: July 31, 1880

Died: October 8, 1936.
Achievements: Premchand brought realism to Hindi literature. Premchand wrote on the realistic issues of the day-communalism, corruption, zamindari, debt, poverty, colonialism etc. He avoided the use of highly Sanskritized Hindi and instead used the dialect of the common people.

American

Anne Frank

Born: June 12 1929

Died: March 15 1945

Achievements: Anne frank was one of the million Jewish children who died in the Holocaust. She was well-acclaimed for her style of writing in her diary, which she wrote during the Nazi invasion period. Her diary was later adapted into several plays and films. She was a German national by birth till 1941 but then she lost her nationality due to the anti-Semitic policies during the Nazi Germany period (as per the Nuremberg Laws).

Edgar Allan Poe

Born: January 19, 1809
Died: October 3 1849

Achievements: Edgar Allan Poe was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic, who were also associated with the American Romantic Movement. He was better known for his tales of mystery and macabre. He was amongst the earliest American practitioners of short story and was generally considered as the inventor of the detective-fiction genre. Poe is also credited for his contribution in the emerging genre of science fiction. His works greatly influenced American literature and also other specialized fields like, cosmology and cryptography. His best known fiction works were generally Gothic and dealt with themes like the effects of decomposition, concerns of premature burial, the reanimation of the dead, and mourning. Poe's works are also considered as the part of dark romanticism genre. He became famous for his popular poems like, “The Raven” and “Annabel Lee”.

Japan

Nakane Kōtei

Born:  March 27, 1839
Died:  January 20, 1913

Achievements: Nakane is noted for writing an excellent essay and short biographies. Nakane is not well known today, even in his native Japan, as he wrote using the old Japanese style of prose, or Classical Chinese. While Nakane did not write as a profession, his historical investigations were nonetheless skillfully authored. Possessing wide interests and a deep culture, Nakane's writings covered the history of Japan and China, including their literature. Mori Senzō (森 銑三), an expert on old Japanese literature, remarked that the works of Nakane have the character of a noble Samurai.

Chikamatsu Monzaemon

Born:   1653
Died:   January 6, 1725

Achievements: Chikamatsu Monzaemon (Japanese: 近松門左衛門; real name Sugimori Nobumori, 杉森信盛 was a Japanese dramatist of jōruri, the form of puppet theater that later came to be known as bunraku, and the live-actor drama, kabuki.Encyclopædia Britannica writes that he is "widely regarded as the greatest Japanese dramatist." His most notable plays deal with double-suicides of honor bound lovers.