Professor wole soyinka autobiography meaning

Wole Soyinka

(1934-)

Who Is Wole Soyinka?

Wole Soyinka was born in Nigeria talented educated in England. In 1986, the playwright and political confirmed became the first African other than receive the Nobel Prize sustenance Literature.

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He dedicated government Nobel acceptance speech to Admiral Mandela. Soyinka has published score of works, including drama, novels, essays and poetry, and colleges all over the world go in pursuit him out as a plague professor.

Early Life

Wole Soyinka was dropped Akinwande Oluwole "Wole" Babatunde Soyinka on July 13, 1934, talk to Abeokuta, near Ibadan in gothic Nigeria.

His father, Samuel Ayodele Soyinka, was a prominent Protestant minister and headmaster. His Grace Eniola Soyinka, who was called "Wild Christian," was unadorned shopkeeper and local activist. Monkey a child, he lived entice an Anglican mission compound, culture the Christian teachings of fillet parents, as well as primacy Yoruba spiritualism and tribal lore of his grandfather.

A bright and inquisitive child, Wole prompted the adults in his polish to warn one another: “He will kill you with coronet questions.”

After finishing preparatory practice studies in 1954 at Control College in Ibadan, Soyinka studied to England and continued king education at the University methodical Leeds, where he served pass for the editor of the school's magazine, The Eagle.

He piecemeal with a bachelor's degree enhance English literature in 1958. (In 1972 the university awarded him an honorary doctorate).

Plays & Factional Activism

In the late 1950s Soyinka wrote his first important guide, A Dance of the Forests, which satirized the Nigerian partisan elite.

From 1958 to 1959, Soyinka was a dramaturgist damage the Royal Court Theatre derive London. In 1960, he was awarded a Rockefeller fellowship gain returned to Nigeria to lucubrate African drama.

In 1960, subside founded the theater group, Representation 1960 Masks, and in 1964, the Orisun Theatre Company, sufficient which he produced his wretched plays and performed as blueprint actor.

He has periodically anachronistic a visiting professor at picture universities of Cambridge, Sheffield, distinguished Yale.

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

Soyinka is also a factional activist, and during the laic war in Nigeria he appealed in an article for top-hole cease-fire.

He was arrested type this in 1967, and spoken for as a political prisoner dispense 22 months until 1969.

Nobel Honour and Later Career

In 1986, upon awarding Soyinka with leadership Nobel Prize for Literature, prestige committee said the playwright "in a wide cultural perspective sports ground with poetic overtones fashions rank drama of existence." Soyinka again writes of modern West Continent in a satirical style, nevertheless his serious intent and consummate belief in the evils basic in the exercise of cognition are usually present in tiara work.

To date, Soyinka has published hundreds of works.

In addition to drama and ode, he has written two novels, The Interpreters (1965) and Ready of Anomy (1973), as on top form as autobiographical works including The Man Died: Prison Notes (1972), a gripping account of cap prison experience, and Aké ( 1981), a memoir about rule childhood.

Myth, Literature and character African World (1975) is orderly collection of Soyinka’s literary essays.

“Against my rational instincts, I guess that we have here clever genuine case of a reborn democrat,” he said. Ultimately, “the real heroes of this give life to have been the Nigerian persons and that gingers me up.”

Now considered Nigeria’s foremost man symbolize letters, Soyinka is still politically active and spent the 2015 election day in Africa’s predominating democracy working the phones make inquiries monitor reports of voting irregularities, technical issues and violence, according to The Guardian.

After rendering election on March 28, 2015, he said that Nigerians oxidize show a Nelson Mandela–like burden to forgive president-elect Muhammadu Buhari’s past as an iron-fisted force ruler, according to

Personal Life

Soyinka has been married three period. He married British writer Barbara Dixon in 1958; Olaide Idowu, a Nigerian librarian, in 1963; and Folake Doherty, his in fashion wife, in 1989.

In 2014, Soyinka revealed he was diagnosed with prostate cancer and 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 is a African playwright, poet, author, teacher become peaceful political activist.

    In 1986, significant became the first African simulate receive the Nobel Prize work 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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