Inspirational Quotes by Wole Soyinka (Nigerian Dramatist, Novelist)

Wole Soyinka (b.1934,) fully Akinwande Oluwole Babatunde Soyinka, is a Nigerian playwright, poet, and political activist. He is one of Africa’s most prominent literary figures and was the first African to receive the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature.

Born in Abeokuta, Nigeria, Soyinka attended University College Ibadan and the University of Leeds, earning a Bachelor’s degree in English literature. He became a play-reader for the Royal Court Theatre, London, where his first play, The Inventio, was performed in 1955.

In 1959, Soyinka returned to Ibadan, where productions of The Swamp Dwellers and the joyously ribald comedy The Lion and the Jewel immediately established him as a leading figure in Nigerian literature. He founded the Masks Amateur Theatre Company (1960) and the professional Orisun Repertory (1964.) These companies played an essential role in developing a new Nigerian drama written in English but incorporating traditional festivals’ words, music, dance, and pantomime. Soyinka was a political prisoner 1967–69 and later served as a professor of comparative literature at Ife University 1976–85 and a professor of Africana studies and theatre at Cornell University 1988–92.

Soyinka’s writing explores the tension between old and new in modern Africa. It includes his first novel, The Interpreters (1964,) the poetry collection A Shuttle in the Crypt (1972,) and the mostly prose “prison notes,” The Man Died (1973.) His play The Beatification of Area Boy (1995) was banned by the Nigerian government but received its world premiere at the West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds, at the same time as its publication.

In addition to his literary achievements, Soyinka has been actively involved in politics and social issues, speaking out against corruption, dictatorship, and human rights abuses in Nigeria and worldwide. He has lived in exile in Europe and the USA since 1994. In 1996, he published The Open Sore of a Continent, condemning the military dictatorship of Nigeria for annulling the 1993 election. In 2005, he became one of the founders and leaders of Nigeria’s Pro-Sovereign National Conference Coalition (Pronaco.)

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