Ny Avana Ramanantoanina

Ny Avana Ramanantoanina (1891–1940) was a Malagasy poet and playwright. He is among the most celebrated literary artists of Madagascar, principally renowned for his poetry, but also his stories and plays. He wrote during the colonial period and is considered to have been the first Malagasy writer to weave political messages into his work. He wrote primarily in the Malagasy language. A contemporary of Jean-Joseph Rabearivelo, who is commonly cited as the first African poet to write according to Western conventions, Ramanantoanina was highly critical of the French colonial authority. He was a member of the secret nationalist organization Vy Vato Sakelika, and was exiled to Mayotte in the Comoros when the organization was banned by the French colonial authority in 1917. His writings were consequently banned and were not reprinted until the 1980s in Madagascar. As a result, his writings are relatively less well known in international literary circles than those of Rabearivelo.

Ramanantoanina was born in 1891 in Ambatofotsy, a suburb of Antananarivo in central Madagascar, to a family that belonged to the former Merina aristocracy that had been dissolved upon French colonization in 1896. He died in 1940 in Antananarivo.

Works Complete anthologies: Oeuvres complètes, tome I. Le diariste (Les Calepins bleus), l'épistolier, le moraliste. Edited by Serge Meitinger, Liliane Ramarosoa and Claire Riffard. Paris: Éditions du CNRS, 2010.

Poetry: La Coupe de cendres. Antananarivo: G. Pitot de la Beaujardière, 1924.

Theatrical plays: Imaitsoanala, fille d'oiseau: cantate. Antananarivo: Imprimerie officielle, 1935.

Prose: L'Interférence, suivi de Un conte de la nuit. Paris: Hatier, 1988.

Miscellaneous: Ephémérides de Madagascar. Edited by M. Eugene Jaeglé. Antananarivo: 1934.