Ivan Franko – Ukrainian writer, poet, and thinker of the late 19th–early 20th centuries, author of the poem “Moses” and the novel “Boryslav Laughs.” A founder of modern Ukrainian literature, known as the “Titan of Labour,” he was also a political activist. His vast work in prose, poetry, drama, criticism, and scholarship made him a symbol of national revival.
📚 Wrote over 6,000 works across genres. 👨🎓 Studied at universities in Lviv, Chernivtsi, Vienna, and Graz. 🏛 Imprisoned several times for socialist and national ideas. 💡 His poem “Moses” became a manifesto of Ukrainian independence. 📖 Nicknamed the “Ukrainian Stonecutter” (Kamenyar). 🌍 Mastered more than 10 languages, translating Homer, Dante, Goethe, Shakespeare. 🖋 “Boryslav Laughs” was the first Ukrainian novel about the working class and capitalism. 🏆 Nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature (1915). 😮 Odd fact: worked himself to exhaustion, hence called “Titan of Labour.” 😂 Funny: wrote so prolifically that publishers joked he was “a printing press by himself.”