Rupert Roopnaraine (31 January 1943 – 23 February 2026) was a Guyanese cricketer, writer and politician. Roopnaraine served as Minister of Education of Guyana between 2015 and 2017.
Life and career Early life Roopnaraine was born in Kitty, Georgetown, British Guiana (now Guyana). He played first-class cricket for the Cambridge University team from 1964 to 1966 and was awarded a Blue for representing the university in the annual University Match against Oxford in 1965 and 1966. As a cricketer, he was a lower order right-handed batsman and a right-arm off-break bowler.
Politics In 2015, Roopnaraine was appointed Minister of Education of Guyana. In 2017, he was reassigned to Ministry of the Presidency, and Nicolette Henry replaced him as Minister of Education.
Author Primacy of the Eye: The Art of Stanley Greaves was published in 2003. Roopnaraine also contributed a substantial "Introduction" to the Peepal Tree Press 2010 edition of Edgar Mittelholzer's Shadows Move Among Them.
Roopnaraine's collection of essays, The Sky's Wild Noise, won the non-fiction category of the 2013 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature."Roopnaraine wins Bocas non-fiction literary prize", Guyana Times, 30 April 2013. The judges commented that "in the corpus of non-fiction prose in the Caribbean intellectual tradition, only José Martí and George Lamming rival the range of Roopnaraine's capacities of response, depth of analysis and subtle and mordant style.""Rupert Roopnaraine wins major literary award", Kaieteur News, 30 April 2013.
Death Roopnaraine died at the Georgetown Public Hospital on 23 February 2026, at the age of 83.
Selected works The Web of October: Rereading Martin Carter (Peepal Tree Press, 1986) Suite for Supriya (love poems; Peepal Tree Press, 1993) Primacy of the Eye: The Art of Stanley Greaves (Peepal Tree Press, 2003) The Sky's Wild Noise: Selected Essays (Peepal Tree Press, 2012)
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