WOLE SOYINKA

Akinwande Oluwole "Wole" Soyinka (born 13 July 1934) is a Nigerian writer, poet and playwright. He

was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature, where he was recognised as a man "who in a wide

cultural perspective and with poetic overtones fashions the drama of existence", and became the first

African in Africa and in Diaspora to be so honoured. In 1994, he was designated UNESCO (United

Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) Goodwill Ambassador for the promotion of

African culture, human rights, freedom of expression, media and communication.

One of the most prominent members of the eminent Ransome-Kuti family, his mother Grace Eniola was

the daughter of Rev. Canon JJ Ransome-Kuti, sister to Olusegun Azariah Ransome-Kuti and Oludotun

Ransome-Kuti, making Soyinka cousin to the late Fela Kuti, the late Beko Ransome-Kuti, the late

Olikoye Ransome-Kuti and to Yemisi Ransome-Kuti.

Soyinka was born into a Yoruba family in Abeokuta, specifically, a Remo family from Isara-Remo on

July 13, 1934. His father was Christian Clergy, Canon SA Soyinka (aka "Teacher pupa" (light skinned

teacher)). He received a primary school education in Abeokuta and attended secondary school at

Government College, Ibadan. He then studied at the University College, Ibadan (1952–1954) where he

founded the pyrates confraternity (an anti-corruption and justice seeking student organization) and the

University of Leeds (1954–1957) from which he received a First class honours degree in English

Literature. He worked as a play reader at the Royal Court Theatre in London before returning to Nigeria

to study African drama. He taught in the Universities of Lagos, Ibadan, and Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo

University, Ile-Ife). He became a Professor of Comparative Literature at the then University of Ife in

1975. He is currently an Emeritus Professor at the same university.

Soyinka has played an active role in Nigeria's political history. In 1965, he made a broadcast demanding

the cancellation of the rigged Western Nigeria Regional Elections following his seizure of the Western

Nigeria Broadcasting Service studio. He was arrested, arraigned but freed on a technicality by Justice

Esho. In 1967, during the Nigerian Civil War he was arrested by the Federal Government of General

Yakubu Gowon and put in solitary confinement for his attempts at brokering a peace between the warring

Nigerian and Biafran parties. While in prison he wrote poetry on tissue paper which was published in a

collection titled Poems from Prison. He was released 22 months later after international attention was

drawn to his unwarranted imprisonment. His experiences in prison are recounted in his book The Man

Died: Prison Notes of Wole Soyinka (1972).

He has been an implacable, consistent and outspoken critic of many Nigerian military dictators, and of

political tyrannies worldwide, including the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe. A great deal of his writing has

been concerned with "the oppressive boot and the irrelevance of the colour of the foot that wears it". This

activism has often exposed him to great personal risk, most notable during the government of General

Sani Abacha (1993–1998), which pronounced a death sentence on him "in absentia". During Abacha's

regime, Soyinka escaped from Nigeria via the "Nadeco Route" on motorcycle. While abroad, he visited

parliaments and conferred with world leaders to impose a regime of sanctions against the brutal Abacha

regime. These actions and his setting up of the Radio Kudirat helped immensely in securing Nigeria's

return to civilian democratic governance. Living abroad, mainly in the United States, he was a professor

first at Cornell University and then subsequently taught at Emory University in Atlanta. When civilian

rule returned in 1999, Soyinka returned to a hero's welcome back in Lagos, Nigeria. He accepted an

Emeritus Professorship at Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University) on the condition that the university bar

all former military officers from the position of chancellor. Soyinka is currently the Elias Ghanem

Professor of Creative Writing at the English department of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and the

President's Marymount Institute Professor in Residence at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles,

California, US.

Biography

Early life

Soyinka was born on 13 July 1934, in the city of Abeokuta, Ogun State in Nigeria's Western Region (at

that time a British dominion), as the second of six children of Samuel Ayodele Soyinka and Grace Eniola

Soyinka. His father, whom he often refers to as S.A. or "Essay" in literalized form, was the headmaster of

St. Peters School in Abẹokuta. Soyinka's mother, dubbed by him as "Wild Christian", owned a shop in the

nearby market and was a political activist within the women's movement in the local community. His

mother was Anglican, although much of the community followed indigenous Yorùbá religious tradition.

Soyinka grew up in an atmosphere of religious syncretism, with influences from both Christianity and his

culture's traditional beliefs. The home of the Soyinka family had electricity and radio (chiefly thanks to

his father).

In 1940, after attending St. Peters Primary School, Soyinka went to Abẹokuta Grammar School, where he

won several prizes for literary composition. In 1946 he was accepted by Government College in Ibadan,

at that time one of Nigeria’s elite secondary schools. After the completion of his studies there, Soyinka

moved to Lagos where he found employment as a clerk. During this time he wrote some radio plays and

short stories that were broadcast on Nigerian radio stations. After finishing his course in 1952, he began

studies at University College in Ibadan, connected with University of London. During this course he

studied English literature, Greek, and Western history.

In the year 1953-1954, his second and last at University College, Ibadan, Soyinka commenced work on

his first publication, a short radio broadcast for Nigerian Broadcasting Service National Programme called

"Keffi's Birthday Threat," which was broadcast in July 1954 on Nigerian Radio Times. Whilst at

university, Soyinka and six others founded the Pyrates Confraternity, the first confraternity in Nigeria.

Studies abroad and at home

Later in 1954 Soyinka relocated to England, where he continued his studies in English literature, under

the supervision of his mentor Wilson Knight at the University of Leeds. He became acquainted then with

a number of young, gifted British writers. Before defending his B.A., Soyinka successfully engaged in

literary fiction, publishing several pieces of comedic nature. He also worked as an editor for The Eagle,

an infrequent periodical of humorous character. In a page two column in The Eagle, he wrote

commentaries on academic life, often stingingly criticizing his university peers. Well known for his sharp

tongue, he is said to have courteously defended, affronted and insulted female colleagues.

After completing his degree, he remained in Leeds with the intention of earning an M.A. Influenced by

his promoter, Soyinka decided to attempt to merge European theatrical traditions with those of his Yorùbá

cultural heritage. In 1958 his first major play emerged, titled The Swamp Dwellers. One year later, he

wrote The Lion and the Jewel, a comedy which received interest from several members of London's

Royal Court Theatre. Encouraged, Soyinka left Leeds and moved to London, where he worked as a play

reader for the Royal Court Theatre. During the same period, both of his plays were performed in Ibadan.

However, by 1960, Soyinka had received the Rockefeller Research Fellowship from his alma mater in

Ibadan, and returned to Nigeria. In March he produced his new satire The Trials of Brother Jero. One of

his most recognized plays, A Dance of The Forest, a biting criticism of Nigeria's political elites, won a

contest as the official play for Nigerian Independence Day. On 1 October 1960, it premiered in Lagos as

Nigeria celebrated its sovereignty. Also in 1960, Soyinka established an amateur ensemble acting

company which would consume much of his time over the next few years: the Nineteen-Sixty Masks.

In addition to these activities, Soyinka published various works satirizing the "emergency" in the Western

Region of Nigeria, as his Yorùbá homeland was increasingly occupied and controlled by the federal

government. This had usurped the democratically-elected, Yorùbá-based Action Group (AG) political

party by installing the Nigerian National Democratic Party (NNDP), an amalgamation of conservative

Yoruba interests backed by the largely Northern-dominated federal government. The increasingly

militarized occupation of the Western Region eventually led to a disequilibrium in power, placing the

more left-leaning Action Group and the Igbo-centric National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons

(NCNC) in tenuous positions, as national politics began catering exclusively to more conservative

interests. This imbalance eventually led to a coup by military officers under Major Kaduna Nzeogwu.

With the money gained from the Rockefeller Foundation for research on African Theater, Soyinka bought

a Land Rover and began traveling throughout the country as a researcher with the Department of English

Language of the University College in Ibadan. In an essay published at this time, he criticized Leopold

Senghor's Négritude as a nostalgic and indiscriminate glorification of the black African past that ignores

the potential benefits of modernization. "A tiger does not shout its tigritude," he declared, "it acts."

In December 1962, his essay "Towards a True Theater" was published, and he began working for the

Department of English Language at Obafemi Awolowo University in Ifẹ. Soyinka discussed current

affairs with "negrophiles," and on several occasions openly opposed government censorship. At the end

of 1963, his first feature-length movie emerged, Culture in Transition. In April 1964 The Interpreters, "a

complex but also vividly documentary novel", was published in London. That December, together with

other scientists and men of theater, he founded the Drama Association of Nigeria. This same year he

resigned his university post, as a protest against imposed pro-government behavior by authorities. A few

months later, he was arrested for the first time, accused of underlying tapes during reproduction of

recorded speech of the winner of Nigerian elections, but he was released after a few months of

confinement, as a result of protests by the international community of writers. This same year he also

wrote two more dramatic pieces: Before the Blackout, the comedy Kongi’s Harvest, and a radio play for

the BBC in London called The Detainee. At the end of the year he was promoted to headmaster and

senior lecturer in the Department of English Language at Lagos University.

Soyinka's political speeches at that time criticized the cult of personality and government corruption in

African dictatorships. April 1965 brought a revival of his play Kongi’s Harvest at the International

Festival of Negro Art in Dakar, Senegal, where another of his plays, The Road, was awarded the Grand

Prix. In June, Soyinka produced his play The Lion and The Jewel for Hampstead Theatre Club in London.

Civil war involvement and imprisonment

The coup led by Major Chukwuma K Nzeogwu in January 1966 was counteracted by another coup in July

of the same year, this time led by a cabal of largely Northern officers, placing General Yakubu Gowan in

the position of head of state. Immediately following the coup, sectarian violence erupted as many Igbo

living outside of their homeland in the southeast were subjected to violent retaliatory action, which many

considered to be of genocidal proportions. Droves of Igbos were forced to return home, where calls for

secession from the Nigerian state increased under military governor Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu.

After becoming chief of Cathedral of Drama at University of Ibadan, Soyinka who had gained

considerable respect within Nigeria would involve himself in the destabilizing political situation. In

August 1967, he secretly and unofficially met Ojukwu in the Southeastern town of Enugu, with the aim of

averting civil war. For his attempts at negotiating a peaceful solution to the conflict, Soyinka was forced

to commence living underground.

However, his involvement in the developing national crisis did not end here. Wọle returned to Ẹnugu to

meet with Victor Banjọ, a Yorùbá who had been swayed to the Biafran side. Banjọ intimated to Soyinka a

message of critical importance in regards to Biafra's goals, which he claimed were "national liberation"

for the whole of Nigeria. For these efforts, Banjọ sought the support of Western military leaders; in

particular, he delivered Banjo's message directly to Lieutenant Colonel Olusegun Obasanjo, who had

recently been appointed to commanding officer for the Western Region. Four evenings after Soyinka

returned to the West, Biafran forces invaded the Midwest region, an area which previously maintained de

facto neutrality; this altered the terms and conditions of the war drastically, as the Biafrans had turned into

both secessionists and expansionists.

Following the occupation of the Midwest, Soyinka met Obasanjo face-to-face to relay the goals of the

Biafrans to the man in control of the West. Unfortunately Ọbasanjọ's decision to side with the Nigerian

federation had already been made. The invasion of the Midwest eventually sparked counter-attacks into

the Midwest by federal government forces, signaling the commencement of civil war. Ọbasanjọ disclosed

his meeting with Soyinka to his superiors, who declared the writer a traitor and convened search parties to

obtain Soyinka for arrest, which they eventually did. Soyinka was then incarcerated until the end of the

unfolding civil war.

He endured imprisonment for 22 months as his country slid into civil war between the federal

government and the Biafrans. Though he was refused basic materials, such as books, pens, and paper, for

continuing his creative work during much of his imprisonment, he did manage to write a significant body

of poems and notes criticizing the Nigerian government. Despite his imprisonment, in September 1967,

his play The Lion and The Jewel was produced in Accra, and in November The Trials of Brother Jero and

The Strong Breed were produced in the Greenwich Mews Theatre in New York. He also published a

collection of his poetry entitled Idanre and Other Poems. Idanre was inspired by Soyinka’s visit to the

sanctuary of the Yorùbá deity Ogun, whom Soyinka regards irreligiously as his companion deity, kindred

spirit, and protector.

In 1968, also in New York, the group Negro Ensemble Company showed Kongi’s Harvest. While still

imprisoned, Soyinka translated from Yoruba a fantastical novel by his compatriot D.O. Fagunwa, called

The Forest of a Thousand Demons: A Hunter's Saga.

Release and literary productivity

In the late 1950s, Soyinka completed his first two important plays, "The Swamp Dwellers" and "The Lion

and the Jewel," both tackling the uneasy relationship between progress and tradition in Africa. His play

"The Invention" was staged in 1957 at the Royal Court Theatre. At that time his only published works

were poems such as "The Immigrant" and "My Next Door Neighbour," which appeared in the magazine

Black Orpheus.[8] In October 1969, when the civil war came to an end, amnesty was proclaimed, and

Soyinka was released from prison. For the first few months after his release, Soyinka stayed at a friend’s

farm in southern France, where he sought solitude after the period of mental stagnation. From this

experience emerged The Bacchae of Euripides, a reworking of the Pentheus myth. He soon published out

of London a tome of his poetry based on his experience in prison, Poems from Prison. At the end of the

year, he returned to his office of Headmaster of Cathedral of Drama in Ibadan, and cooperated in the

founding of the literary periodical “Black Orpheus”.

In 1970 he produced the play Kongi’s Harvest, while simultaneously creating a film by the same title. In

June 1970, he concluded another play, called Madman and Specialists. With the intention of gaining

theatrical experience, along with the group of fifteen actors of Ibadan University Theatre Art Company,

he went on a trip to the famous Eugene O'Neill Memorial Theatre Center in Waterford, Connecticut in the

United States, where his latest play premiered. In 1971 his poetry collection A Shuttle in the Crypt was

published. While Madmen and Specialists was exposed afresh in Ibadan, Soyinka took the lead role as the

murdered first Prime Minister of the Republic of the Congo, Kinshasa, in the Paris production of

Murderous Angels. His powerful autobiographical work The Man Died, a collection of notes from prison,

was issued the same year. In April, concerned about the political situation in Nigeria, Soyinka resigned

from his duties at the University in Ibadan, and began a few years of voluntary exile. In July, in Paris,

fragments of his famous play “The Dance of The Forests” were performed.

In 1972 he was declared an Honoris Causa doctorate by the University of Leeds. Soon thereafter, another

of his novels, Season of Anomy, came out, in addition to his Collected Plays, published by the Oxford

University Press. In 1973 the National Theatre, London, which commissioned the play, premiered The

Bacchae of Euripides in a "reputedly misconceived" production. In 1973 the plays Camwood on the

Leaves, and Jero's Metamorphosis were first published. From 1973-1975, Soyinka devoted himself to

scientific activity. He underwent one year probation at Churchill College of Cambridge University, and

gave a series of lectures at a number of European universities.

In 1974 Collected Plays, Volume II was issued by Oxford University Press. In 1975 Soyinka was

promoted to the position of editor for Transition, a magazine based in the Ghanaian capital, Accra (where

he moved for some time). Soyinka utilized his columns in Transition to once again attack the “negrofiles”

(in his essay “Neo-Tarsanism: The Poetics of Pseudo-Transition”), and military regimes, protesting

against the military junta of Idi Amin in Uganda. After the political turnover in Nigeria, and the

subversion of Gowon's military regime in 1975 he returned to his homeland and re-assumed his position

of the Cathedral of Comparative Literature at the University of Ife.

In 1976 the poetry collection Ogun Abibiman appeared, and a collection of essays entitled Myth,

Literature and the African World, in which Soyinka explores the genesis of mysticism in African theatre

and, using examples from the literatures of both continents, compares and contrasts European and African

cultures. At the Institute of African Studies at the University of Ghana in Legon, he delivered a series of

guest lectures and became a professor at the University of Ife. In October, the French version of The

Dance of The Forests was performed in Dakar, while in Ife Death and The King’s Horseman premiered.

In 1977 Opera Wọnyọsi, his adaptation of Bertold Brecht's The Threepenny Opera, was staged, and in

1979 he both directed and acted in Jon Blair and Norman Fenton's drama The Biko Inquest, a work based

on the story of Steve Biko, a South African student and human rights activist beaten to death by

Apartheid police forces. In 1981 Wọle Soyinka’s first autobiographical novel Ake: The Years of

Childhood was released. From the memoir, it is vivid to the five senses of man that he is an infant

prodigy. The memoirs, "Ake: The Years of Childhood" and "You Must Set Forth at Dawn" portray

literature as a foundation of pleasure. Both are sublime and classic. With a total of five memoirs, Soyinka

is regarded number one producer of memoirs in the world.

Soyinka founded another theatrical group (after Nineteen-Sixty Masks), called Guerrilla Unit, its aim

being to cooperate with local communities analyzing their actual problems and then responding to some

of their grievances in dramatic sketches. In 1983 the play Requiem for a Futurologist had its initial

performance at the University of Ife. In July one of Soyinka's musical projects, the Unlimited Liability

Company, issued a long-play record titled I Love My Country, where a number of prominent Nigerian

musicians play songs composed by and provided with lyrics by Wọle Soyinka. In 1984, he directed the

film Blues for a Prodigal, which premiered the same year as a new play, A Play of Giants.

The years 1975-1984 were for Soyinka a period of increased political activity. During that time he was

among the authorities at the University of Ife; among other duties, he was responsible for the security of

public roads. He continuously criticized the corruption in the government of democratically-elected

President Shehu Shagari, and often found himself at odds with Shagari's military successor, Muhammadu

Buhari. In 1984, a Nigerian court banned The Man Died, and in 1985, the play Requiem for a

Futurologist went into print in London.

Nobel Prize laureate

In 1960, he was awarded a Rockefeller bursary and returned to Nigeria to study African drama. Soyinka

was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986, as one “who in a wide cultural perspective and with

poetic overtones fashions the drama of existence” becoming the first African laureate. His Nobel

acceptance speech was devoted to South African freedom-fighter Nelson Mandela. Soyinka's speech was

an outspoken criticism of apartheid and the politics of racial segregation imposed on the majority by the

Nationalist South African government. In 1986, he received the Agip Prize for Literature.

Soyinka's Nobel Prize Lecture, "This Past Must Address Its Present," judged to be very revealing,

revelling, poignant, eloquent, is an eye-opener to the misdeeds of the Apartheid South Africa. The

Lecture is the most revealing and downright message concerning the enslaved, colonized and disparaged

Africans and International Affairs since the foundation of Nobel Prize in Literature in 1901. It is an ideal

legacy for people interested in rhetorics, history and International Relations. The power of words cannot

be underestimated. They can move passionate hearts to reason and tears. At long last, the disparate words

moved the entire world to reason and tears, resulting in the release of Nelson Mandela in 1990, after 27

years behind bars.

In 1988, his new collection of poems Mandela's Earth, and Other Poems was published, while in Nigeria

another collection of essays entitled Art, Dialogue and Outrage: Essays on Literature and Culture

appeared. In the same year, Soyinka accepted the position of professor of African studies and theatre at

Cornell University. In 1990, the second portion of his memoir called Isara: A Voyage Around Essay

appeared. In July 1991 the BBC African Service transmits his radio play A Scourge of Hyacinths, and the

next year (in June 1992) in Siena (Italy), his play From Zia with Love has its premiere. Both works are

very bitter political parodies, based on events which took place in Nigeria in the 1980s. In 1993 Soyinka

was awarded an honorary doctorate from the Harvard University. The next year appears another part of

his autobiography Ibadan: The Penkelemes Years (A Memoir: 1946-1965). The following year his play

The Beatification of Area Boy was published. On 21 October 1994 Soyinka was appointed UNESCO

Goodwill Ambassador for the Promotion of African culture, human rights, freedom of expression, media

and communication. In November 1994 Soyinka fled from Nigeria through the border with Benin and

then to the United States. In 1996 his book The Open Sore of a Continent: A Personal Narrative of the

Nigerian Crisis was first published.

In 1997 Soyinka was charged with treason by the government of General Sani Abacha. In 1999 a new

volume of poems entitled Outsiders was released. His play King Baabu, premiered in Lagos in 2001, is a

political satire on the theme of African dictatorship and the "warped aspect of human nature that makes

people think they have the right to dominate others and also inflict very agonising experiences on fellow

humans". In 2002 a collection of his poems, Samarkand and Other Markets I Have Known, was published

by Methuen. In April 2006, his memoirs, titled You Must Set Forth at Dawn, were published by Random

House. In 2006 he cancelled his keynote speech for the annual S.E.A. Write Awards Ceremony in

Bangkok to protest the Thai military's successful coup against the government.

In April 2007 Soyinka called for the cancellation of the Nigerian presidential elections held two weeks

earlier because of widespread fraud and violence.

Soyinka, along with theatre director Richard Schechner, actor Alan Cumming and filmmaker Brad Mays

was interviewed about The Bacchae as part of an up-coming series Invitation to World Literature, which

officially launched on Annenberg Media's educational website in September, 2010.[14] The series,

produced by Annie Wong for WGBH Boston, began airing nationally on PBS in October, 2010. Soyinka

continues to serve as resource person globally while acting as inspiration and voice of conscience to

leaders[15] and recently in the wake of the Christmas Day (2009) attempted bombing cautioned that the

United Kingdom's social logic which allows every religion to openly proselytize their faith is being

abused by religious fundamentalists thereby turning England into a cesspit for the breeding of extremism.

He affirmed that freedom of worship is logical and correct but warned against the consequence of the

illogic of allowing religions to preach apocalyptic violence.

The Muse of a Wordsmith

Ogun has always been Soyinka's Muse ever since he put pen to paper. With the help of his Muse, he has

excelled in poetry, play-writing, dramaturgy, essay-writing and novelization--all this, makes him a fecund

wordsmith. Since the award of his Nobel Prize in 1986, more people worldwide (poets, especially), have

turned to Ogun for their inspiration and guidance and Ogun has made them proud of their long pedigrees.

Ogun, the deity and the overseer of iron and steel, is also the overseer of whosoever warily makes use of

his instruments--from a kitchen knife to a computer.

Style and Valor

With the wink and nod of a writer of smooth-hewn background, smiling at serendipities and bypassing

much luxury on the laps of man, Soyinka has continued to raise his voice to the ceiling ever since he

wrote his unique Telephone Conversation in 1962.

A valiant writer, he believes that the promise of pen belongs to those who can take the bulls by the horns.

He has a very unique style and a thorough command of language.

Political Philosophy

Granted that political philosophy is the participation, the contribution and the study of the issues and

concerns pertaining to the nature of the city, government, politics, laws, rights, liberty and justice for

mankind, Soyinka has associated himself with all these. Literarily, philosophically and politically, he has

done all the above, and excelled in all, as a multi-talented political philosopher.

He was a peace maker (putting his life in harm's way) during the Nigerian Civil War. In 1994, he was

appointed by the UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) as a

Goodwill Ambassador for the promotion of African cultures in Africa and in Diaspora, human rights,

freedom of expression, media and communication--as a result of his indefatigable savvies/activities as a

political philosopher who knows how to start a journey and how to end it.

Now that political culture is sprouting in Nigeria, we cannot but doff our tasselled hats to the "Bringer of

Light" and his comrades who have fearlessly fought for a marked or charted direction--politically and

philosophically.

In recognition of Governor Fashola's political philosophy and politics of success in Lagos State, Soyinka

lets the world know that Governor Fashola is not our typical politician but a politician who works like "a

skilled mechanic."

Nigerian Literature

Nigerian literature was born in earnest with the award of Nobel Prize in literature to Wole Soyinka in

1986. Soyinka, often referred to as the Bringer of Light to African Literatures, has put Nigerian literature

on the world map, and since 1986, hundreds of Nigerians have proudly taken to studying Nigerian

literature, as departments of Nigerian literature are being created in all the universities across the country.

Writers of different genres have been published. Some have won prizes, while some are finalists in

national and international contests, adding their voices to the identity, authenticity, aesthetics and glory of

Nigerian literature.

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, the first bestseller in Africa, is a strong accretion to the glory of

Nigerian literature.

The list of other Nobel Laureates in literature who believe in Nigerian literature includes Maguib

Mahfouz (1988), Nadine Gordimer(1991), Derek Walcott (1992), Toni Morisson (1993), J.M. Coetzee

(2003).

Centers, in Diaspora which have projected in large measure the Yoruba/Nigerian culture--philosophy,

religion and literature, for many years include Oyotunji African Kingdom in South Carolina, United

States and IWALEWA HOUSE of the Bayreuth University, Germany. IWALEWA HOUSE was founded

in 1981 by Professor Ulli Beier, a German writer, scholar and connoisseur of Yoruba/Nigerian literature.

A well-travelled writer in Yorubaland, he was (may his soul rest in peace) an intimate friend of memoirist

Wole Soyinka.

Many opinions from the academic and non-academic circles are hoping that the Nobel Prize Committee

for Literature may decide in the future to award Nobel Prize twice to a valiant and multi-talented

writer/political activist like Wole Soyinka. Like Booker Prize, that will be a precedent, if it happens.

The Wole Soyinka African Writers' Enclave

In 2011, under the aegis of African Heritage Research Library and Cultural Centre, a writers' enclave has

been built in honor of Professor Wole Soyinka. The location is Adeyipo Village, Lagelu Local

Government Area, Ibadan, Oyo State, Nigeria. The main objectives of the Enclave, amongst others, are:

* To promote African and World Literatures.

* To provide a conducive atmosphere for the improvement of writers' craft.

* To increase world-wide knowledge and appreciation of African literatures.

* To raise the standard of African literature toward ensuring its active participation in cultural and

national development.

* To initiate an endowment for a prestigious African Writers' Prize.

The enclave includes a Writer-in-Residence Programme which will enable writers to stay for a period of

two, three or six months, engaging in serious creative writing. Writers-in-residence will receive monetary

stipends. It is hoped that their works will impact positively on the lives of all categories of literary

audience--youth, adult and the general public, throughout Africa and the entire world.

Awards and honors

1967: Head of the Department of Theater Arts, University of Ibadan; June: "The Writer in a Modern

African State"; August to October 1969 imprisoned for writings sympathetic to secessionist Biafra;

September: The Lion and the Jewel produced Accra; November: Trials of Brother Jero and The Strong

Breed produced, Greenwich Mews Theatre, New York; Idanre and Other Poems.

April 1968: Kongi's Harvest, produced by Negro Ensemble Company, New York.

February 1969: The Road produced by Theatre Limited, Kampala, Uganda; Poems from Prison, London.

August 1970: Completes and directs Madmen and Specialists with Ibadan University Theare Arts

Company in New Haven, Connecticut (at Yale?); play tours to Harlem; directs plays by Pirandello and

others; Kongi's Harvest (film).

1971: A Shuttle in the Crypt (poems); March: revives Madmen and Specialists in Ibadan; acts Patrice

Lumumba in John Littlewood's French production of Conor Cruise O'Brien's Murderous Angels, Paris;

testifies before Kazeem Enquiry on violation of students' rights.

1972: Publishes his prison notes, The Man Died, London; July: produces extracts from A Dance of the

Forests in Paris.

1973: Honorary Ph. D., University of Leeds; Season of Anomie (novel); Collected Plays I; August:

National Theatre, London, produces Bacchae of Euripides, which it commissioned.

1973-74: Overseas Fellow, Churchill College, Cambridge, and Visiting Professor of English, University

of Sheffield; Collected Plays II.

1975: Edited Poems of Black Africa, London and New York; "Neo-Tarzanism: The Poetics of Pseudo-

Tradition" (essay); attacks Idi Amin in Transition.

1976: Ogun Abibiman (poems); Myth, Literature, and the African World; Visiting Professor, Institute of

African Studies, University of Ghana, Legon; Professor, University of Ife; September: Nairobi High

School production of A Dance of the Forests; October: French production of A Dance of the Forests,

Dakar, Gambia; December: produces Death and the King's Horseman, Ife.

1978: "Language as Boundary" (essay).

1981: Aké: The Years of Childhood (autobiography); Opera Wonyosi, an adaptation of Brecht's Three

Penny Opera; "The Critic and Society: Barthes, Leftocracy, and Other Mythologies" (essay).

1982: Blues for the Prodigal (film) released; "Cross Currents: The 'New African' after Cultural

Encounters" (essay).

1983: Elected an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature

1983: Anisfield-Wolf Book Award.

December 1983: Die Still, Rev. Dr. Godspeak (radio play); Requiem for a Futurologist (play) produced at

Ife university; Blues for a Prodigal (film); "Shakespeare and the Living Dramatist" (essay); (July) -

Unlimited Liability Company (phonograph recording).

1984: A Play of Giants (play).

1985: Requiem for a Futorologist published; "Climates of Art" (Herbert Read Memorial Lecture),

Institute of Contemporary Art, London.

1986: Nobel Prize for Literature. "The External Encounter: Ambivalence in African Arts and Literature"

(essay), A Play of Giants (play), Fellow, Society for the Humanities, Cornell University; Agip Prize for

Literature; 1986 (October); Awarded Nigeria's second highest honour, Commander of the Federal

Republic, CFR.

1987: Six Plays; Childe Internationale (play) republished.

1989: "The Search" (short story).

1990: Benson Medal from Royal Society of Literature

1991: Sisi Clara Workshop on Theatre (Lagos); A Scourge of Hyacinths (radio play) BBC African

Service; "The Credo of Being and Nothingness" (The First Rev. Olufosoye Annual Lecture in Religion,

delivered at the University of Ibadan on 25 January 1991; published.

1992: From Zia With Love.

1993: honorary doctorate, Harvard University.

1994: Ibadan: The Penkelemes Years (A Memoir: 1946-1965) (autobiography); Memories of a Nigerian

Childhood; flees Nigeria (November).

1995: The Beatification of Area Boy.

1996: The Open Sore of a Continent: A Personal Narrative of the Nigerian Crisis.

March 1997: Charged with treason by military dictatorship. Considered one of Africa's poets alongside

Cesair, Senghor, Ohaeto, B'tek, Okigbo, Ohanyido, Okara, Clark and so forth.

2004: Reith Lecturer for BBC Radio 4, discussing A Climate of Fear

2005: Honorary doctorate degree, Princeton University. Together with Nigerian elder statesman Chief

Anthony Enahoro, he convened an alternative national confab under the aegis of PRONACO (Pro -

national conference group). On 26 November 2005, he was conferred with the chieftaincy title of

Akinlatun of Egbaland by the Alake, Oba of the Egba clan of Yorubaland which he belongs to, thus

making him a tribal aristocrat with the right to use the Yoruba title Oloye.

2008: Distinguished Scholar in Residence, Franklin Humanities Institute, Duke University

2009: Academy of Achievement Golden Plate Award

Works

Plays

* The Swamp Dwellers

* The Lion and the Jewel

* The Trials of Brother Jero

* A Dance of the Forests

* The Strong Breed

* Before the Blackout

* Kongi's Harvest

* The Road

* The Bacchae of Euripides

* Madmen and Specialists

* Camwood on the Leaves

* Jero's Metamorphosis

* Death and the King's Horseman

* Opera Wonyosi

* Requiem for a Futurologist

* A Play of Giants

* A Scourge of Hyacinths (radio play)

* The Beatification of the Area Boy

* King Baabu

* Etiki Revu Wetin

* Sixty Six (short piece)

Novels

* The Interpreters

* Season of Anomie

Memoirs

* The Man Died: Prison Notes

* Aké: The Years of Childhood

* Isara: A Voyage around Essay

* Ibadan: The Penkelemes Years: a memoir 1946-65

* You Must Set Forth at Dawn

Poetry collections

* A Big Airplane Crashed Into The Earth (original title Poems from Prison)

* Idanre and other poems

* Mandela's Earth and other poems

* Ogun Abibiman

* Samarkand and Other Markets I Have Known

* Abiku

* The Ballad of the Landlord

* After the Deluge

* Prisonnettes

* Telephone Conversation

Essays

* Neo-Tarzanism: The Poetics of Pseudo-Transition

* Art, Dialogue, and Outrage: Essays on Literature and Culture

* Myth, Literature and the African World

* From Drama and the African World View

* The Burden of Memory - The Muse of Forgiveness

* The Credo of Being and Nothingness

Movies

* Kongi's Harvest

* Culture in Transition

* Blues for a Prodigal