Wole Soyinka

Akinwande Oluwole "Wole" Soyinka (born 13 July 1934) is a Nigerian writer, notable especially as a playwright and poet; he was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature, the first African in Africa and the diaspora to be so honoured.

Soyinka was born into a Yoruba family in Abeokuta. After study in Nigeria and the UK, he worked with the Royal Court Theatre in London. He went on to write plays that were produced in both countries, in theatres and on radio. He took an active role in Nigeria's political history and its struggle for independence from Great Britain. In 1965, he seized the Western Nigeria Broadcasting Service studio and broadcast a demand for the cancellation of the Western Nigeria Regional Elections. In 1967 during the Nigerian Civil War, he was arrested by the federal government of General Yakubu Gowon and put in solitary confinement for two years.

Soyinka has strongly criticized many Nigerian military dictators, as well as other political tyrannies, including the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe. Much of his writing has been concerned with "the oppressive boot and the irrelevance of the colour of the foot that wears it". During the regime of General Sani Abacha (1993–1998), Soyinka escaped from Nigeria via the "Nadeco Route" on motorcycle. Living abroad, mainly in the United States, he was a professor first at Cornell University and then at Emory University in Atlanta, where in 1996 he was appointed Robert W. Woodruff Professor of the Arts. Abacha proclaimed a death sentence against him "in absentia". With civilian rule restored to Nigeria in 1999, Soyinka returned to his nation. He has also taught at Oxford, Harvard and Yale.

From 1975 to 1999, he was a Professor of Comparative Literature at the Obafemi Awolowo University, then called the University of Ife. With civilian rule restored in 1999, he was made professor emeritus. Soyinka has been a Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. In the fall of 2007 he was appointed Professor in Residence at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California, US.

Early life and education
From a Remo family of Isara-Remo, Soyinka was born the second of six children, in the city of Abẹokuta, Ogun State in Nigeria, at that time a British dominion. His father, Samuel Ayodele Soyinka (whom he called S.A. or "Essay"), was an Anglican minister and the headmaster of St. Peters School in Abẹokuta. Soyinka's mother, Grace Eniola Soyinka (whom he dubbed the "Wild Christian"), owned a shop in the nearby market. She was a political activist within the women's movement in the local community. She was also Anglican. As much of the community followed indigenous Yorùbá religious tradition, Soyinka grew up in an atmosphere of religious syncretism, with influences from both cultures. His father's position enabled him to get electricity and radio at home.

His mother was one of the most prominent members of the influential Ransome-Kuti family: she was the daughter of Rev. Canon JJ Ransome-Kuti, and sister to Olusegun Azariah Ransome-Kuti and Oludotun Ransome-Kuti. Among Soyinka's cousins were the musician Fela Kuti, the human rights activist Beko Ransome-Kuti, politician Olikoye Ransome-Kuti and activist Yemisi Ransome-Kuti.

In 1940, after attending St. Peters Primary School in Abeokuta, 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 finishing his course at Government College in 1952, he began studies at University College in Ibadan (1952–1954), affiliated with the University of London. He studied English literature, Greek, and Western history. In the year 1953-1954, his second and last at University College, Ibadan, Soyinka began work on "Keffi's Birthday Threat," a short radio play for Nigerian Broadcasting Service. It was broadcast in July 1954. Whilst at university, Soyinka and six others founded the Pyrates Confraternity, an anti-corruption and justice-seeking student organization, the first confraternity in Nigeria. Soyinka gives a detailed account of his early life in his memoir Aké: The Years of Childhood.

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 (1954–1957). He met numerous young, gifted British writers. Before defending his B.A., Soyinka began publishing and worked as an editor for the satirical magazine The Eagle. He wrote a column on academic life, often criticizing his university peers.

Early career
After graduating, he remained in Leeds with the intention of earning an M.A.. Soyinka intended to write new work to combine European theatrical traditions with those of his Yorùbá cultural heritage. His first major play, The Swamp Dwellers (1958) was followed a year later, by The Lion and the Jewel, a comedy that attracted interest from several members of London's Royal Court Theatre. Encouraged, Soyinka 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. They dealt with the uneasy relationship between progress and tradition in Nigeria.

In 1957 his play The Invention was the first of his works to be produced at the Royal Court Theatre. At that time his only published works were poems such as "The Immigrant" and "My Next Door Neighbour", which were published in the Nigerian magazine Black Orpheus. This was founded in 1957 by the German scholar Ulli Beier, who had been teaching at the University of Ibadan since 1950.

Soyinka received a Rockefeller Research Fellowship from University College in Ibadan, his alma mater, for research on African theatre, and he returned to Nigeria. He produced his new satire The Trials of Brother Jero. His work, A Dance of The Forest (1960), a biting criticism of Nigeria's political elites, won a contest that year 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 the "Nineteen-Sixty Masks", an amateur acting ensemble to which he devoted considerable time over the next few years.

Soyinka published works satirizing the 'Emergency' in the Western Region of Nigeria, as his Yorùbá homeland was increasingly occupied and controlled by the federal government. The political tensions arising from recent post-colonial independence eventually led to a military coup and civil war (1967-1970).

With the Rockefeller grant, Soyinka bought a Land Rover. He began travelling throughout the country as a researcher with the Department of English Language of the University College in Ibadan. In an essay of the time, he criticized Leopold Senghor's Négritude movement 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. He began teaching with the Department of English Language at Obafemi Awolowo University in Ifẹ. Soyinka discussed current affairs with "négrophiles," and on several occasions openly condemned government censorship. At the end of 1963, his first feature-length movie, Culture in Transition, was released. In April 1964 The Interpreters, "a complex but also vividly documentary novel", was published in London.

That December, together with scientists and men of theatre, Soyinka founded the Drama Association of Nigeria. In 1964 he also resigned his university post, as a protest against imposed pro-government behaviour 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. He was released after a few months of confinement, as a result of protests by the international community of writers. This same year he wrote two more dramatic pieces, Before the Blackout and the comedy Kongi’s Harvest. He also wrote The Detainee, a radio play for the BBC in London. 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. In April 1965 his play Kongi’s Harvest was produced in revival at the International Festival of Negro Art in Dakar, Senegal. His play The Road was awarded the Grand Prix. In June 1965, Soyinka produced his play The Lion and The Jewel for Hampstead Theatre Club in London.

Civil war and imprisonment
After becoming chief of the Cathedral of Drama at the University of Ibadan, Soyinka became more politically active. Following the military coup of January 1966, he secretly and unofficially met with the military governor Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu in the Southeastern town of Enugu (August 1967), to try to avert civil war. As a result, he had to go into hiding.

He was imprisoned for 22 months as civil war ensued between the federal government and the Biafrans. Though refused materials such as books, pens, and paper, he still wrote 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. 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, Idanre and Other Poems. It was inspired by Soyinka’s visit to the sanctuary of the Yorùbá deity Ogun, whom he regards as his "companion" deity, kindred spirit, and protector.

In 1968, the Negro Ensemble Company in New York produced 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 production
In October 1969, when the civil war came to an end, amnesty was proclaimed, and Soyinka and other political prisoners were freed. For the first few months after his release, Soyinka stayed at a friend’s farm in southern France, where he sought solitude. He wrote The Bacchae of Euripides (1969), a reworking of the Pentheus myth. He soon published in London a book of poetry, Poems from Prison. At the end of the year, he returned to his office as Headmaster of Cathedral of Drama in Ibadan, and cooperated in the founding of the literary periodical Black Orpheus (likely named after the 1959 film directed by Marcel Camus and set in the favela of Rio de Janeiro.)

In 1970 he produced the play Kongi’s Harvest, while simultaneously adapting it as a film by the same title. In June 1970, he finished another play, called Madman and Specialists. Together with the group of fifteen actors of Ibadan University Theatre Art Company, he went on a trip to the United States, to the Eugene O'Neill Memorial Theatre Center in Waterford, Connecticut, where his latest play premiered. It gave them all an experience with theatrical production in another English-speaking country.

In 1971, his poetry collection A Shuttle in the Crypt was published. Madmen and Specialists was produced in Ibadan that year. Soyinka traveled to Paris to take the lead role as Kinshasa, the murdered first Prime Minister of the Republic of the Congo, in the production of his Murderous Angels. His powerful autobiographical work The Man Died (1971), a collection of notes from prison, was also published.

In April, concerned about the political situation in Nigeria, Soyinka resigned from his duties at the University in Ibadan, and began years of voluntary exile. In July in Paris, excerpts from his well-known play The Dance of The Forests were performed.

In 1972, he was awarded an Honoris Causa doctorate by the University of Leeds. Soon thereafter, his novel Season of Anomy (1972) and his Collected Plays (1972) were both published by Oxford University Press. In 1973 the National Theatre, London, commissioned and premiered the play The Bacchae of Euripides. In 1973 his plays Camwood on the Leaves and Jero's Metamorphosis were first published. From 1973 to 1975, Soyinka spent time on scientific studies. He underwent one year's probation at Churchill College, Cambridge University, and gave a series of lectures at a number of European universities.

In 1974 his 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 of Accra, where he moved for some time. Soyinka used his columns in Transition to criticize the "negrophiles" (for instance, his article "Neo-Tarzanism: The Poetics of Pseudo-Transition") and military regimes. He protested 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 resumed his position at the Cathedral of Comparative Literature at the University of Ife.

In 1976 he published his poetry collection Ogun Abibiman, as well as a collection of essays entitled Myth, Literature and the African World. In these, Soyinka explores the genesis of mysticism in African theatre and, using examples from both European and African literature, compares and contrasts the cultures. He delivered a series of guest lectures at the Institute of African Studies at the University of Ghana in Legon. In October, the French version of The Dance of The Forests was performed in Dakar, while in Ife, his Death and The King’s Horseman premiered.

In 1977 Opera Wọnyọsi, his adaptation of Bertold Brecht's The Threepenny Opera, was staged in Ibadan. In 1979 he both directed and acted in Jon Blair and Norman Fenton's drama,The Biko Inquest, a work based on the life of Steve Biko, a South African student and human rights activist who was beaten to death by apartheid police forces. In 1981 Soyinka published his autobiographical work Ake: The Years of Childhood, which won a 1983 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award.

Soyinka founded another theatrical group called the Guerrilla Unit. Its goal was to work with with local communities in analyzing their problems and to express some of their grievances in dramatic sketches. In 1983 his play, Requiem for a Futurologist, had its first performance at the University of Ife. In July, one of Soyinka's musical projects, the Unlimited Liability Company, issued a long-playing record entitled I Love My Country, in which several prominent Nigerian musicians played songs composed by Soyinka. In 1984, he directed the film Blues for a Prodigal; his new play A Play of Giants was produced the same year.

During the years from 1975-1984, Soyinka was also more politically active. At the University of Ife, his administrative duties included the security of public roads. He criticized the corruption in the government of the democratically elected President Shehu Shagari. When he was replaced by the general Muhammadu Buhari, Soyinka was often at odds with the military. In 1984, a Nigerian court banned his book The Man Died (1971). The following year, his play Requiem for a Futurologist (1985) was published in London.

Since 1986
Soyinka was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986, becoming the first African laureate. He was described as one "who in a wide cultural perspective and with poetic overtones fashions the drama of existence". His Nobel acceptance speech "This Past Must Address Its Present," 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.

In 1988, his 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 Isara: A Voyage Around Essay appeared. In July 1991 the BBC African Service transmited his radio play A Scourge of Hyacinths, and the next year (1992) in Sienna (Italy), his play From Zia with Love had its premiere. Both works are very bitter political parodies, based on events that took place in Nigeria in the 1980s. In 1993 Soyinka was awarded an honorary doctorate from the Harvard University. The next year another part of his autobiography appeared: Ibadan: The Penkelemes Years (A Memoir: 1946-1965). The following year his play The Beatification of Area Boy was published. In 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, a political satire on the theme of African dictatorship. In 2002 a collection of his poems, Samarkand and Other Markets I Have Known, was published by Methuen. In April 2006, his memoir You Must Set Forth at Dawn was 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, beset by widespread fraud and violence. In the wake of the Christmas Day (2009) attempted bombing he questioned the United Kingdom's social logic that allows every religion to openly proselytize their faith, asserting that it is being abused by religious fundamentalists thereby turning England into a cesspit for the breeding of extremism. He supported the freedom of worship but warned against the consequence of the illogic of allowing religions to preach apocalyptic violence.

Recognition
In 2011, the African Heritage Research Library and Cultural Centre built a writers' enclave in his honour. It is located in Adeyipo Village, Lagelu Local Government Area, Ibadan, Oyo State, Nigeria. The enclave includes a Writer-in-Residence Programme that enables writers to stay for a period of two, three or six months, engaging in serious creative writing.

He is commemorated by the Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa.

Awards

 * 1973: Honorary Ph. D., University of Leeds
 * 1973-74: Overseas Fellow, Churchill College, Cambridge
 * 1983: Elected an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature
 * 1983: Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, United States.
 * 1986: Nobel Prize for Literature
 * 1986 Agip Prize for Literature
 * 1986 Commander of the Federal Republic, CFR.
 * 1990: Benson Medal from Royal Society of Literature
 * 1993: Honorary doctorate, Harvard University
 * 2005: Honorary doctorate degree, Princeton University.
 * 2005: Conferred with the chieftaincy title of Akinlatun of Egbaland by the Alake, Oba of his Egba clan of Yorubaland. He was made a tribal aristocrat with the right to use the Yoruba title Oloye.
 * 2009: Academy of Achievement Golden Plate Award

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

Novels

 * The Interpreters
 * Season of Anomie

Memoirs

 * The Man Died: Prison Notes (1971)
 * Aké: The Years of Childhood (1981)
 * Isara: A Voyage around Essay (1990)
 * Ibadan: The Penkelemes Years: a memoir 1946-65 (1994)
 * You Must Set Forth at Dawn (2006)

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
 * ''A Climate of Fear

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 Area Boy
 * King Baabu
 * Etiki Revu Wetin
 * Sixty Six (short piece)

Movies

 * Kongi's Harvest
 * Culture in Transition
 * Blues for a Prodigal