Daniachew Worku

Daniachew returned to his university teaching post after his year in America. During the next five years, and leading up to the Ethiopian Revolution of 1974, he published two novels and numerous short stories and articles. Many of these stories and articles appeared in the Ethiopian Herald newspaper. One, The Voice, later appeared in the Iowa Review.

The Thirteenth Sun appeared as number 125 in Heinemann's African Writers Series, the second novel by an Ethiopian author to appear in the series after Sahle Sellassie's The Afersata. It is described as 'one of the most extraordinary novels to appear in the African Writers Series'. Its release in Ethiopia was disrupted amid concerns that it would be censored by the government of Haile Selassie, with small numbers reportedly sold under the counter of the United Nations bookshop in Addis Ababa. In 1974 the first demonstrations of what would become the Ethiopian Revolution created an opportunity for a wider release, and Heinemann took the opportunity to import additional copies.

Daniachew wrote his second novel in English. It was published in 1973 as part of Heinemann's African Writers Series and later translated into German and Portuguese. The cover features a photo by George Hallett.

Daniachew's first novel, አደፍርስ (Adefris), was written in Amharic and published in 1969. It is described as providing a panoramic view of Ethiopian society before the revolution.

In 1967, Daniachew became one of 12 writers to join the first year of the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa. He obtained a master's degree in Fine Arts and published a short story, Mammite, which tells the story of a young boy's changing attitude to his maid during the Italian Occupation. He also produced a series of eight unpublished stories as part of the Writing Program. Kurtz argues that some of Daniachew's writing during this time provided the basis for his English-language novel, The Thirteenth Sun.

Daniachew joined University College Addis Ababa in 1960, where he began to write poems that were later collected in ሾምቧ በሉ ሰዎች (Imbuwa balu sewoch). The 13 poems can be characterised by protest, satire and social criticism. After graduating with a BA in Ethiopian Languages and Literatures he became a graduate assistant, before being promoted to assistant lecturer, then lecturer. He also continued to write plays, staging the tragedy ትበልጭ (Tibelch) at the Haile Selassie I Theatre.

Daniachew Worku (Amharic: ዳኛቸው ወርቁ; 24 February 1936 – 1 December 1994) was an Ethiopian writer whose works include novels, plays and short stories. He wrote in both Amharic and English.

His father, Worku Bezabih, went to France in 1914 and served in World War I before returning to Ethiopia and marrying his mother, Asegedech Habte-Wold. His early life was shaped by the Italian Occupation and a number of encounters the family had with occupying troops. As a result of this, his father fled the family home for a year.