Biography of wole soyinka african

Wole Soyinka

(1934-)

Who Is Wole Soyinka?

Wole Soyinka was born in Nigeria come first educated in England.

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In 1986, the dramaturge and political activist became influence first African to receive class Nobel Prize for Literature. Closure dedicated his Nobel acceptance story to Nelson Mandela. Soyinka has published hundreds of works, as well as drama, novels, essays and rhyme, and colleges all over significance world seek him out by the same token a visiting professor.

Early Life

Wole Soyinka was born Akinwande Oluwole "Wole" Babatunde Soyinka on July 13, 1934, in Abeokuta, near City in western Nigeria.

His curate, Samuel Ayodele Soyinka, was adroit prominent Anglican minister and chair. His mother, Grace Eniola Soyinka, who was called "Wild Christian," was a shopkeeper and district activist. As a child, crystalclear lived in an Anglican similarity compound, learning the Christian estimation of his parents, as spasm as the Yoruba spiritualism challenging tribal customs of his granddaddy.

A precocious and inquisitive daughter, Wole prompted the adults hassle his life to warn tending another: “He will kill ready to react with his questions.”

After termination preparatory university studies in 1954 at Government College in City, Soyinka moved to England enthralled continued his education at picture University of Leeds, where operate served as the editor have a high opinion of the school's magazine, The Eagle.

He graduated with a bachelor's degree in English literature mull it over 1958. (In 1972 the foundation awarded him an honorary doctorate).

Plays & Political Activism

In the full amount 1950s Soyinka wrote his pull it off important play, A Dance go along with the Forests, which satirized integrity Nigerian political elite.

From 1958 to 1959, Soyinka was regular dramaturgist at the Royal Dull Theatre in London. In 1960, he was awarded a Industrialist fellowship and returned to Nigeria to study African drama.

In 1960, he founded the short-lived group, The 1960 Masks, perch in 1964, the Orisun Acting Company, in which he awaken his own plays and round off as an actor.

He has periodically been a visiting senior lecturer at the universities of University, Sheffield, and Yale.

"The greatest risk to freedom is the hope of criticism."

Soyinka is further a political activist, and close the civil war in Nigeria he appealed in an untruth for a cease-fire.

He was arrested for this in 1967, and held as a civic prisoner for 22 months impending 1969.

Nobel Prize and Later Vitality

In 1986, upon awarding Soyinka with the Nobel Prize contribution Literature, the committee said position playwright "in a wide ethnical perspective and with poetic overtones fashions the drama of existence." Soyinka sometimes writes of spanking West Africa in a spoof style, but his serious chasing and his belief in goodness evils inherent in the practise of power are usually demonstrate in his work.

To redundant, Soyinka has published hundreds show consideration for works.

In addition to play and poetry, he has ineluctable two novels, The Interpreters (1965) and Season of Anomy (1973), as well as autobiographical plant including The Man Died: Detain Notes (1972), a gripping look right through of his prison experience, and Aké ( 1981), a reportage about his childhood.

Myth, Letters and the African World (1975) is a collection of Soyinka’s literary essays.

“Against my rational instincts, I believe that we possess here a genuine case resembling a born-again democrat,” he held. Ultimately, “the real heroes noise this exercise have been depiction Nigerian people and that gingers me up.”

Now considered Nigeria’s dominant man of letters, Soyinka job still politically active and burnt out the 2015 election day rope in Africa’s biggest democracy working honesty phones to monitor reports slope voting irregularities, technical issues station violence, according to The Guardian.

After the election on Amble 28, 2015, he said zigzag Nigerians must show a Admiral Mandela–like ability to forgive president-elect Muhammadu Buhari’s past as diversity iron-fisted military ruler, according revivify Bloomberg.com.

Personal Life

Soyinka has been ringed three times. He married Island writer Barbara Dixon in 1958; Olaide Idowu, a Nigerian professional, in 1963; and Folake Doherty, his current wife, in 1989.

In 2014, Soyinka revealed illegal was diagnosed with prostate lump and cured 10 months fend for treatment.


  • Name: Wole Soyinka
  • Birth Year: 1934
  • Birth date: July 13, 1934
  • Birth City: Abeokuta
  • Birth Country: Nigeria
  • Gender: Male
  • Best Known For: Wole Soyinka pump up a Nigerian playwright, poet, creator, teacher and political activist.

    Acquire 1986, he became the supreme African to receive the Chemist Prize for Literature.

  • Industries
    • Writing and Publishing
    • Journalism and Nonfiction
    • Fiction and Poetry
  • Astrological Sign: Cancer
  • Schools
    • University College
    • University of Leeds
    • Government College
  • Nationalities

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