Utne Reader

In the run-up to the holiday season, a disproportionate number of well-known public figures died. Firebrand author Christopher Hitchens, Czech playwright and politician Václav Havel, and North Korea’s Dear Leader Kim Jong-Il, to name a few. But for all the press that the deaths of those three garnered, Cape Verdean singer Cesária Évora’s silent passing seems to have gone largely unnoticed. Sad and fitting, you might say, for someone from a republic speckled off the west coast of Africa like so much wind-blown Saharan sand.

Two exceptionally astute obituaries, published in Paris Review and The Independent, map Évora’s mark on the world. Keep reading …