Overview
Wole Soyinka is a playwright, poet and essayist who in 1986 became the first African writer awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. He is Yoruba, born at Abeokuta in what is now Ogun State.
Biography
Soyinka studied at Ibadan and Leeds and worked at the Royal Court Theatre in London before returning to Nigeria, where he founded theatre companies and wrote for the stage. A Dance of the Forests was staged for the independence celebrations of 1960; The Lion and the Jewel, The Trials of Brother Jero, Kongi's Harvest and Death and the King's Horseman followed, drawing on Yoruba ritual and masque as well as European dramatic form.
He was imprisoned for close to two years during the civil war after attempting to broker a ceasefire, and wrote about that detention in The Man Died. His memoir Aké: The Years of Childhood, the poetry collections Idanre and A Shuttle in the Crypt, and the critical work Myth, Literature and the African World are all part of a body of writing spanning more than sixty years. He has held professorships in Nigeria, Britain and the United States, and has written and spoken publicly against military rule for most of his career.
Notable achievements
- Awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1986, the first African writer to receive it
- Wrote Death and the King's Horseman, A Dance of the Forests and The Lion and the Jewel
- Published the memoir Aké: The Years of Childhood and the prison account The Man Died
- Long career as a professor of drama and comparative literature in Nigeria, Britain and the United States
Legacy
Soyinka's plays established a body of Nigerian drama that draws on Yoruba performance tradition while working in English, and they are staged and studied internationally. His public opposition to military rule is part of the documented record of that period.