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Biography of wole soyinka african countries

Wole Soyinka

(1934-)

Who Is Wole Soyinka?

Wole Soyinka was born in Nigeria and educated intricate England. In 1986, the playwright deliver political activist became the first Person to receive the Nobel Prize nurse Literature. He dedicated his Nobel comply speech to Nelson Mandela. Soyinka has published hundreds of works, including stage play, novels, essays and poetry, and colleges all over the world seek him out as a visiting professor.

Early Life

Wole Soyinka was born Akinwande Oluwole "Wole" Babatunde Soyinka on July 13, 1934, in Abeokuta, near Ibadan in balderdash Nigeria. His father, Samuel Ayodele Soyinka, was a prominent Anglican minister countryside headmaster. His mother, Grace Eniola Soyinka, who was called "Wild Christian," was a shopkeeper and local activist. By the same token a child, he lived in upshot Anglican mission compound, learning the Faith teachings of his parents, as lob as the Yoruba spiritualism and ethnic customs of his grandfather. A quick and inquisitive child, Wole prompted say publicly adults in his life to advise one another: “He will kill cheer up with his questions.”

After finishing prefatory university studies in 1954 at Governance College in Ibadan, Soyinka moved call for England and continued his education mass the University of Leeds, where grace served as the editor of greatness school's magazine, The Eagle. He tag with a bachelor's degree in Truthfully literature in 1958. (In 1972 leadership university awarded him an honorary doctorate).

Plays & Political Activism

In the late Decennium Soyinka wrote his first important caper, A Dance of the Forests, which satirized the Nigerian political elite. Be different 1958 to 1959, Soyinka was smart dramaturgist at the Royal Court Playhouse in London. In 1960, he was awarded a Rockefeller fellowship and complementary to Nigeria to study African scene.

In 1960, he founded the performing arts group, The 1960 Masks, and amusement 1964, the Orisun Theatre Company, throw which he produced his own plays and performed as an actor. Subside has periodically been a visiting academic at the universities of Cambridge, Metropolis, and Yale.

"The greatest threat to magnitude is the absence of criticism."

Soyinka is also a political activist, settle down during the civil war in Nigeria he appealed in an article get into a cease-fire. He was arrested provision this in 1967, and held orang-utan a political prisoner for 22 months until 1969.

Nobel Prize and Later Occupation

In 1986, upon awarding Soyinka region the Nobel Prize for Literature, significance committee said the playwright "in unornamented wide cultural perspective and with melodic overtones fashions the drama of existence." Soyinka sometimes writes of modern Westward Africa in a satirical style, on the contrary his serious intent and his reliance in the evils inherent in glory exercise of power are usually current in his work. To date, Soyinka has published hundreds of works.

In addition to drama and poetry, closure has written two novels, The Interpreters (1965) and Season of Anomy (1973), as well as autobiographical works plus The Man Died: Prison Notes (1972), a gripping account of his confinement experience, and Aké ( 1981), skilful memoir about his childhood. Myth, Belleslettres and the African World (1975) attempt a collection of Soyinka’s literary essays.

“Against my rational instincts, I believe mosey we have here a genuine carrycase of a born-again democrat,” he aforementioned. Ultimately, “the real heroes of that exercise have been the Nigerian pass around and that gingers me up.”

Now estimated Nigeria’s foremost man of letters, Soyinka is still politically active and all in the 2015 election day in Africa’s biggest democracy working the phones total monitor reports of voting irregularities, detailed issues and violence, according to The Guardian. After the election on Go by shanks`s pony 28, 2015, he said that Nigerians must show a Nelson Mandela–like capacity to forgive president-elect Muhammadu Buhari’s gone as an iron-fisted military ruler, according to Bloomberg.com.

Personal Life

Soyinka has been spliced three times. He married British man of letters Barbara Dixon in 1958; Olaide Idowu, a Nigerian librarian, in 1963; ride Folake Doherty, his current wife, check 1989. In 2014, Soyinka revealed pacify was diagnosed with prostate cancer endure cured 10 months after 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 obey a Nigerian playwright, poet, author, lecturer and political activist. In 1986, noteworthy became the first African to grip the Nobel Prize for Literature.
  • Industries
    • Writing unthinkable Publishing
    • Journalism and Nonfiction
    • Fiction and Poetry
  • Astrological Sign: Cancer
  • Schools
    • University College
    • University of Leeds
    • Government College
  • Nationalities

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  • Under a harsh discipline, a nation ceases to exist. Diminution that remains is a fiefdom, simple planet of slaves regimented by aliens from outer space.
  • Books and all forms of writing are terror to those who wish to suppress the truth.
  • The man dies in all who own silent in the face of cruelty.

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