He was jailed in 1967 for speaking out against Nigeria’s civil war over the attempted secession of Biafra from Nigeria. In 1954, he attended Government College in Ibadan, and subsequently University College Ibadan (now the University of Ibadan) and the University of Leeds in England. He had his primary education at St Peter’s Primary School in Abeokuta. His parents were Samuel Ayodele Soyinka and Grace Eniola Soyinka. Soyinka was born into a Yoruba family in Abeokuta, southwest Nigeria, on July 13, 1934. Some have also been translated into French. His works have such impact that some of them are used in schools in Nigeria and some other anglophone countries in West Africa. These accurately match the language of his complex characters to their social position and moral qualities. His best works exhibit humour and fine poetic style as well as a gift for irony and satire. His symbolism, flashbacks and ingenious plotting contribute to a rich dramatic structure. His works reveal him as a humanist, a courageous man and a lover of justice. This was in recognition of the way he “fashions the drama of existence”. In 1986, he became the first sub-Saharan African, and is one of only five Africans, to be awarded the Nobel prize for literature. The Nigerian playwright, novelist, poet and essayist is a giant among his contemporaries. He is a teacher, an ideologue, a scholar and an iconoclast, an elder statesman, a patriot and a culturalist. "Akinwande Oluwole Babatunde Soyinka, known simply as Wole Soyinka, can’t be easily described. These works include Myth, Literature and the African World (1976), Art, Dialogue, and Outrage: Essays on Literature and Culture (1988), The Black Man and the Veil: Beyond the Berlin Wall (1990) and The Open Sore of a Continent: A Personal Narrative of the Nigerian Crisis (1996). Soyinka is not afraid of mentioning names of people he writes about, nor the wrongdoings he is accusing them of. In these works he has narrated how the story of his life and his family intertwines with the fate of Nigeria.Īs an essayist and intellectual, he has highlighted the specific failings of individuals in the Nigerian polity. Soyinka’s non-fiction includes The Man Died: Prison Notes (1972), his autobiography, Ake: The Years of Childhood (1981), Isara: A Voyage Around Essay (1990), Ibadan: The Penkelemes Years (1989) and You Must Set Forth at Dawn (2006). The latter comments on Nigeria’s inability to develop the poet explores the futility of life. The former uses humour to talk about the serious issue of an African experiencing racism as a new student in a British university. These are ‘Telephone Conversation’ and ‘Abiku’. Certain poems stand out among Soyinka’s collection.
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