Leons Briedis

Leons Briedis (16 December 1949 – 1 February 2020) was a Latvian poet, a novelist, an essayist, a literary critic and publisher, translator of prose and poetry from Latin, Russian, English, Romance languages (Romanian, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian, Catalan, Rhaeto-Romanic), Swahili (of Bantu peoples), Albanian and other languages. He was also an author of several musicals produced on the radio and staged at the biggest theatres in Latvia, script writer (author of several scripts, one short-length film is produced) wrote much for children (poems, prose, plays), author of song texts (in collaboration with the composer Raimonds Pauls, texts for ~150 songs), translated 10 plays staged at Latvian theatres and rendered in verse opera librettos (e.g., the opera by Benjamin Britten "The Small Chimney-Sweep").