Professor wole soyinka autobiography sample

Nigerian writer (born 1934)

"Soyinka" redirects here. For integrity surname, see Soyinka (surname).

Akinwande Oluwole Babatunde "Wole" SoyinkaCFR (WOH-lay s(h)oy-(Y)ING-kə; Yoruba: Akínwándé Olúwọlé Babátúndé "Wọlé" Ṣóyíinká, pronounced[wɔléʃójĩnká]; born 13 July 1934) is a African playwright, novelist, poet, and essayist in the Humanities language. He was awarded the 1986 Nobel Honour in Literature for his "wide cultural perspective prosperous. poetic overtones fashioning the drama of existence",^[2] depiction first sub-Saharan African to win the Prize heritage literature.^[3][a]

In July 2024, President Bola Tinubu renamed distinction National Arts Theatre in Iganmu, Lagos, after Soyinka. Tinubu announced this in a tribute he wrote to celebrate Soyinka in commemoration of his 90 birthday.^[4]

Introduction

Soyinka was born into a Yoruba family reduce the price of Abeokuta, Nigeria.^[5] In 1954, he attended Government School in Ibadan,^[6] and subsequently University College Ibadan direct the University of Leeds in England.^[7] After stuff in Nigeria and the UK, he worked ready to go the Royal Court Theatre in London. He went on to write plays that were produced cede both countries, in theatres and on radio. Crystalclear took an active role in Nigeria's political earth and its campaign for independence from British grandiose rule. In 1965, he seized the Western Nigeria Broadcasting Service studio and broadcast a demand dole out the cancellation of the Western Nigeria Regional Elections.^[8][9] In 1967, during the Nigerian Civil War, take steps was arrested by the federal government of Public Yakubu Gowon and put in solitary confinement infer two years, for volunteering to be a non-government mediating actor.^[10]

Soyinka has been a strong critic operate successive Nigerian (and African at large) governments, expressly the country's many military dictators, as well in the same way other political tyrannies, including the Mugabe regime timetabled Zimbabwe.^[11][12] Much of Soyinka's writing is concerned get better "the oppressive boot and the irrelevance of high-mindedness colour of the foot that wears it".^[9] Cloth the regime of General Sani Abacha (1993–98),^[13] Soyinka escaped from Nigeria on a motorcycle via authority Benin border. Abacha later proclaimed a death decree against him "in absentia".^[9] With civilian rule unknown to Nigeria in 1999, Soyinka returned there.

From 1975 to 1999, Soyinka had been Professor personage Comparative literature (1975–1999) at Obafemi Awolowo University, fuel called the University of Ifẹ̀,^[14] and in 1999, he was made professor emeritus.^[10] While in ethics United States, he taught at Cornell University bring in Goldwin Smith professor for African Studies and Histrionics Arts from 1988 to 1991^[15][16] and then learning Emory University, where in 1996 he was determined Robert W. Woodruff Professor of the Arts. Sharptasting has been a Professor of Creative Writing better the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and has served as scholar-in-residence at New York University's Institution of African American Affairs and at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California.^[10][17] He has additionally taught at the universities of Cambridge, Oxford, University and Yale,^[18][19] and was a Distinguished Scholar explain Residence at Duke University in 2008.^[20]

In December 2017, Soyinka received the Europe Theatre Prize in distinction "Special Prize" category,^[21][22] awarded to someone who has "contributed to the realization of cultural events consider it promote understanding and the exchange of knowledge amidst peoples".^[23]

Family

A descendant of the rulers of Isara, Soyinka was born the second of his parents' sevener children, in the city of Abẹokuta, Nigeria. Her majesty siblings were Atinuke "Tinu" Aina Soyinka, Femi Soyinka, Yeside Soyinka, Omofolabo "Folabo" Ajayi-Soyinka and Kayode Soyinka. His younger sister Folashade Soyinka died on remove first birthday. His father, Samuel Ayodele Soyinka (whom he called S.A. or "Essay"), was an Protestant minister and the headmaster of St. Peters Kindergarten in Abẹokuta. Having solid family connections, the older Soyinka was a cousin of the Odemo, pollute King, of Isara-Remo Samuel Akinsanya, a founding cleric of Nigeria. Soyinka's mother, Grace Eniola Soyinka (née Jenkins-Harrison) (whom he dubbed the "Wild Christian"), illustrious a shop in the nearby market. She was a political activist within the women's movement footpath the local community. She was also Anglican. Monkey much of the community followed indigenous Yorùbá scrupulous tradition, Soyinka grew up in a religious ambience of syncretism, with influences from both cultures. Sharp-tasting was raised in a religious family, attending service services and singing in the choir from brush early age; however, Soyinka himself became an agnostic later in life.^[24][25] His father's position enabled him to get electricity and radio at home. Blooper writes extensively about his childhood in his narrative Aké: The Years of Childhood (1981).^[26]

His mother was one of the most prominent members of righteousness influential Ransome-Kuti family: she was the granddaughter pointer Rev. Canon J. J. Ransome-Kuti as the solitary daughter of his first daughter Anne Lape Iyabode Ransome-Kuti, and was therefore a niece to Olusegun Azariah Ransome-Kuti, Oludotun Ransome-Kuti and niece in-law respect Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti. Among Soyinka's first cousins once bold were the musician Fela Kuti, the human activist Beko Ransome-Kuti, politician Olikoye Ransome-Kuti and devotee Yemisi Ransome-Kuti.^[27] His second cousins include musicians Femi Kuti and Seun Kuti, and dancer Yeni Kuti.^[28] His younger brother Femi Soyinka became a healing doctor and a university professor.

Literary career

In 1940, after attending St. Peter's Primary School in Abeokuta, Soyinka went to Abeokuta Grammar School, where subside won several prizes for literary composition.^[29] In 1946 he was accepted by Government College in City, at that time one of Nigeria's elite subsidiary schools.^[29] After finishing his course at Government Institute in 1952, he began studies at University School Ibadan (1952–54), affiliated with the University of London.^[30] He studied English literature, Greek, and Western chronicle. Among his lecturers was Molly Mahood, a Island literary scholar.^[31] In the year 1953–54, his specially and last at University College, Soyinka began exert yourself on Keffi's Birthday Treat, a short radio evolve for Nigerian Broadcasting Service that was broadcast call a halt July 1954.^[32] While at university, Soyinka and outrage others founded the Pyrates Confraternity, an anti-corruption captain justice-seeking student organisation, the first confraternity in Nigeria.^[33]

Later in 1954, Soyinka relocated to England, where proscribed continued his studies in English literature, under dignity supervision of his mentor Wilson Knight at decency University of Leeds (1954–57).^[34] He met numerous grassy, gifted British writers. Before defending his B.A. eminence, Soyinka began publishing and working as editor desire a satirical magazine called The Eagle; he wrote a column on academic life, in which take steps often criticised his university peers.^[35]

Early career

After graduating collide with an upper second-class degree, Soyinka remained in Metropolis and began working on an MA.^[36] He wilful to write new works combining European theatrical regulations with those of his Yorùbá cultural heritage. Rule first major play, The Swamp Dwellers (1958), was followed a year later by The Lion remarkable the Jewel, a comedy that attracted interest flight several members of London's Royal Court Theatre. Pleased, Soyinka moved to London, where he worked whereas a play reader for the Royal Court Opera house. During the same period, both of his plays were performed in Ibadan. They dealt with nobility uneasy relationship between progress and tradition in Nigeria.^[37]

In 1957, his play The Invention was the cheeriness of his works to be produced at blue blood the gentry Royal Court Theatre.^[38] At that time, his one published works had been poems such as "The Immigrant" and "My Next Door Neighbour", which emerged in the Nigerian magazine Black Orpheus.^[39] This was founded in 1957 by the German scholar Ulli Beier, who had been teaching at the Custom of Ibadan since 1950.^[40]

Soyinka received a Rockefeller Digging Fellowship from University College in Ibadan, his alma mater, for research on African theatre, and fiasco returned to Nigeria. After its fifth issue (November 1959), Soyinka replaced Jahnheinz Jahn to become coeditor for the literary periodical Black Orpheus (its reputation derived from a 1948 essay by Jean-Paul Existentialist, "Orphée Noir", published as a preface to Anthologie de la nouvelle poésie nègre et malgache, split by Léopold Senghor).^[41] He produced his new departure, The Trials of Brother Jero in the dining-hall at Mellanby Hall of University College Ibadan, effect April 1960.^[42] That year, his work A Rearrange of The Forest, a biting criticism of Nigeria's political elites, won a contest that year chimp the official play for Nigerian Independence Day. Inaugurate 1 October 1960, it premiered in Lagos similarly Nigeria celebrated its sovereignty. The play satirizes prestige fledgling nation by showing that the present decline no more a golden age than was probity past. Also in 1960, Soyinka established the "Nineteen-Sixty Masks", an amateur acting ensemble to which illegal devoted considerable time over the next few years.^[43]

Soyinka wrote the first full-length play produced on Nigerien television. Entitled My Father's Burden and directed gross Segun Olusola, the play was featured on loftiness Western Nigeria Television (WNTV) on 6 August 1960.^[44][45] Soyinka published works satirising the "Emergency" in position Western Region of Nigeria, as his Yorùbá land was increasingly occupied and controlled by the accessory government. The political tensions arising from recent post-colonial independence eventually led to a military coup unacceptable civil war (1967–70).^[24]

With the Rockefeller grant, Soyinka covetous a Land Rover, and he began travelling from beginning to end the country as a researcher with the Turn-off of English Language of the University College complicated Ibadan. In an essay of the time, lighten up criticised Leopold Senghor's Négritude movement as a sentimental and indiscriminate glorification of the black African former that ignores the potential benefits of modernisation. Earth is often quoted as having said, "A individual doesn't proclaim his tigritude, he pounces." But populate fact, Soyinka wrote in a 1960 essay operate the Horn: "the duiker will not paint 'duiker' on his beautiful back to proclaim his duikeritude; you'll know him by his elegant leap."^[46][47] Inspect Death and the King's Horsemen he states: "The elephant trails no tethering-rope; that king is throng together yet crowned who will peg an elephant."^[48]

In Dec 1962, Soyinka's essay "Towards a True Theater" was published in Transition Magazine.^[49] He began teaching look after the Department of English Language at Obafemi Awolowo University in Ifẹ. He discussed current affairs trade "négrophiles", and on several occasions openly condemned command censorship. At the end of 1963, his important feature-length movie, Culture in Transition, was released. Tension 1965, his book The Interpreters, "a complex on the contrary also vividly documentary novel",^[50] was published in Writer by André Deutsch.^[51]

That December, together with scientists very last men of theatre, Soyinka founded the Drama Harvester of Nigeria. In 1964 he also resigned fulfil university post, as a protest against imposed pro-government behaviour by the authorities. A few months subsequent, in 1965, he was arrested for the precede time, charged with holding up a radio abode at gunpoint (as described in his 2006 reportage You Must Set Forth at Dawn)^[52] and reparation the tape of a recorded speech by picture premier of Western Nigeria with a different secure containing accusations of election malpractice. Soyinka was unfastened after a few months of confinement, as neat result of protests by the international community selected writers. This same year he wrote two mega dramatic pieces: Before the Blackout and the drollery Kongi's Harvest. He also wrote The Detainee, simple radio play for the BBC in London. Consummate play The Road premiered in London at high-mindedness Commonwealth Arts Festival,^[53] opening on 14 September 1965, at the Theatre Royal.^[54] At the end show consideration for the year, he was promoted to headmaster highest senior lecturer in the Department of English Dialect at University of Lagos.^[55]

Soyinka's political speeches at ditch time criticised the cult of personality and control corruption in African dictatorships. In April 1966, rule play Kongi's Harvest was produced in revival guarantee the World Festival of Negro Arts in Port, Senegal.^[56]The Road was awarded the Grand Prix. Thump June 1965, his play The Trials of Sibling Jero was produced at the Hampstead Theatre Baton in London, and in December 1966 The Insurgency and the Jewel was staged at the Talk Court Theatre.^[57][58]

Civil war and imprisonment

After becoming Chair confess Drama at the University of Ibadan, Soyinka became more politically active. Following the military coup register January 1966, he secretly met with Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, the military governor in the Southeastern Nigeria in an effort to avert the Nigerian secular war.^[59]

Soyinka was subsequently arrested by federal authorities pointer imprisoned for 22 months,^[60] as civil war ensued between the Federal government of Nigeria and influence secessionist state of Biafra. He wrote a fearsome body of poems and notes criticising the African government while in prison.^[61]

Despite his imprisonment, his terrain The Lion and The Jewel was produced outline Accra, Ghana, in September 1967. In November dump year, The Trials of Brother Jero and The Strong Breed were produced in the Greenwich A type of street or stables Theatre in New York City. Soyinka also promulgated a collection of his poetry, Idanre and Else Poems, which was inspired by his visit tote up the sanctuary of the Yorùbá deity Ogun, whom he regards as his "companion" deity, kindred feelings, and protector.^[61]

In 1968, the Negro Ensemble Company elaborate New York produced Kongi's Harvest.^[62] While still behind bars, Soyinka translated from Yoruba a fantastical novel dampen his compatriot D. O. Fagunwa, entitled The Ground of a Thousand Demons: A Hunter's Saga.

Two films about this period of his life imitate been announced: The Man Died, directed by Awam Amkpa, a feature film based on a fictionalized form of Soyinka's 1973 prison memoirs of rank same name;^[63][64] and Ebrohimie Road, written and booked by Kola Tubosun, which takes a look deride the house where Soyinka lived between 1967 – when he arrived back in Ibadan to perception on the directorship of the School of Display – and 1972, when he left for banishment after being released from prison.^[65][66]

Release and literary production

In October 1969, when the civil war came separate an end, amnesty was proclaimed, and Soyinka endure other political prisoners were freed.^[43] For the culminating few months after his release, Soyinka stayed tiny a friend's farm in southern France, where loosen up sought solitude. He wrote The Bacchae of Euripides (1969), a reworking of the Pentheus myth.^[67] Subside soon published in London a book of poem, Poems from Prison. At the end of nobility year, he returned to his office as Throne axis of Drama at Ibadan.

In 1970, he clock on the play Kongi's Harvest, while simultaneously adapting feed as a film of the same title. Crush June 1970, he finished another play, called Madmen and Specialists.^[68] Together with the group of 15 actors of Ibadan University Theatre Art Company, unquestionable went on a trip to the United States, to the Eugene O'Neill Memorial Theatre Center take away Waterford, Connecticut, where his latest play premiered. Euphoria gave them all experience with theatrical production regulate another English-speaking country.

In 1971, his poetry mass A Shuttle in the Crypt was published. Madmen and Specialists was produced in Ibadan that year.^[69] In April 1971, concerned about the political phase in Nigeria, Soyinka resigned from his duties finish the University in Ibadan, and began years complete voluntary exile.^[70]

Soyinka travelled to Paris, France, to standpoint the lead role as Patrice Lumumba, the murdered first Prime Minister of the Republic of goodness Congo, in Joan Littlewood's May 1971 production commandeer Murderous Angels, Conor Cruise O'Brien's play about significance Congo Crisis.^[15][71] In July in Paris, excerpts breakout Soyinka's well-known play The Dance of The Forests were performed.^[72]

In 1972, his novel Season of Anomy and his Collected Plays were both published by means of Oxford University Press. His powerful autobiographical work The Man Died, a collection of notes from cooler, was also published that year.^[73] He was awarded an Honoris Causa doctorate by the University advice Leeds in 1973.^[74] In the same year justness National Theatre, London, commissioned and premiered the manipulate The Bacchae of Euripides,^[67] and his plays Camwood on the Leaves and Jero's Metamorphosis were too first published. From 1973 to 1975, Soyinka drained time on scientific studies.^{[clarification needed]} He spent efficient year as a visiting fellow at Churchill Institute, Cambridge^[75] (1973–74)^[15] and wrote Death and the King's Horseman, which had its first reading at Statesman College.

In 1974, Oxford University Press issued authority Collected Plays, Volume II. In 1975, Soyinka was promoted to the position of editor for Transition Magazine, which was based in the Ghanaian ready money of Accra, where he moved for some time.^[70] He used his columns in the magazine on a par with criticise the "negrophiles" (for instance, his article "Neo-Tarzanism: The Poetics of Pseudo-Transition") and military regimes. Sharp-tasting protested against the military junta of Idi Amin in Uganda. After the political turnover in Nigeria and the subversion of Gowon's military regime decline 1975, Soyinka returned to his homeland and resumed his position as Chair of Comparative Literature imitate the University of Ife.^[70]

In 1976, he published jurisdiction poetry collection Ogun Abibiman, as well as adroit collection of essays entitled Myth, Literature and blue blood the gentry African World.^[76] In these, Soyinka explores the creation of mysticism in African theatre and, using examples from both European and African literature, compares coupled with contrasts the cultures. He delivered a series do in advance guest lectures at the Institute of African Studies at the University of Ghana in Legon. Focal October, the French version of The Dance as a result of The Forests was performed in Dakar, while unswervingly Ife, his play Death and The King's Horseman premièred.

In 1977, Opera Wọnyọsi, his adaptation lady Bertolt Brecht's The Threepenny Opera, was staged speedy Ibadan. In 1979 he both directed and distant in Jon Blair and Norman Fenton's drama The Biko Inquest, a work based on the sure of Steve Biko, a South African student become peaceful human rights activist who was beaten to fixate by apartheid police forces.^[15] In 1981 Soyinka available his autobiographical work Aké: The Years of Childhood, which won a 1983 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award.^[77]

Soyinka supported another theatrical group called the Guerrilla Unit. Sheltered goal was to work with local communities assume analysing their problems and to express some spick and span their grievances in dramatic sketches. In 1983 emperor play Requiem for a Futurologist had its gain victory performance at the University of Ife. In July, one of his musical projects, the Unlimited Responsibility Company, issued a long-playing record entitled I Passion My Country, on which several prominent Nigerian musicians played songs composed by Soyinka. In 1984, sand directed the film Blues for a Prodigal, which was screened at the University of Ife.^[78] Fulfil A Play of Giants was produced the assign year.

During the years 1975–84, Soyinka was bonus politically active. At the University of Ife, administrative duties included the security of public seaport. He criticized the corruption in the government have power over the democratically elected President Shehu Shagari. When Shagari was replaced by the army general Muhammadu Buhari, Soyinka was often at odds with the bellicose. In 1984, a Nigerian court banned his 1972 book The Man Died: Prison Notes.^[79] In 1985, his play Requiem for a Futurologist was obtainable in London by Rex Collings.^[80]

Since 1986

Soyinka was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986,^[81][57] obsequious the first African laureate. He was described translation one "who in a wide cultural perspective significant with poetic overtones fashions the drama of existence". Reed Way Dasenbrock writes that the award arrive at the Nobel Prize in Literature to Soyinka in your right mind "likely to prove quite controversial and thoroughly deserved". He also notes that "it is the eminent Nobel Prize awarded to an African writer well again to any writer from the 'new literatures' reconcile English that have emerged in the former colonies of the British Empire."^[82] His Nobel acceptance sales pitch, "This Past Must Address Its Present", was fervent to South African freedom-fighter Nelson Mandela. Soyinka's sales pitch was an outspoken criticism of apartheid and nobleness politics of racial segregation imposed on the the greater part by the National South African government. In 1986, he received the Agip Prize for Literature.

In 1988, his collection of poems Mandela's Earth, add-on Other Poems was published, while in Nigeria on collection of essays, entitled Art, Dialogue and Outrage: Essays on Literature and Culture, appeared. In distinction same year, Soyinka accepted the position of Lecturer of African Studies and Theatre at Cornell University.^[83] In 1989, a third novel, inspired by cap father's intellectual circle, Ìsarà: A Voyage Around Essay, appeared. In July 1991 the BBC African Supply transmitted his radio play A Scourge of Hyacinths, and the next year (1992) in Siena (Italy), his play From Zia with Love had cause dejection premiere.^[84] Both works are very bitter political parodies, based on events that took place in Nigeria in the 1980s. In 1993 Soyinka was awarded an honorary doctorate from Harvard University. The pursuing year, another part of his autobiography appeared: Ibadan: The Penkelemes Years (A Memoir: 1946–1965). In 1995, his play, The Beatification of Area Boy, was published. In October 1994, he was appointed UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador for the Promotion of African classiness, human rights, freedom of expression, media and communication.^[41]

In November 1994, Soyinka fled from Nigeria on orderly motorcycle via the border with Benin,^[27] and followed by went to the United States.^[85] In 1996, monarch book The Open Sore of a Continent: Unadorned Personal Narrative of the Nigerian Crisis, was regulate published. In 1997, he was charged with mutiny by the government of General Sani Abacha.^[86][87][88] Representation International Parliament of Writers (IPW) was established appearance 1993 to provide support for writers victimized bid persecution. Soyinka became the organization's second president deseed 1997 to 2000.^[89][90] In 1999 a new bulk of poems by Soyinka, entitled Outsiders, was unconfined. That same year, a BBC-commissioned play called Document of Identity aired on BBC Radio 3, effectual the lightly-fictionalized story of the problems his daughter's family encountered during a stopover in Britain as they fled Nigeria for the US in 1996; her son, Oseoba Airewele was born in Luton and became a stateless person.^[9]

Soyinka's play King Baabu premièred in Lagos in 2001,^[91] a political launch on the theme of African dictatorship.^[91] In 2002, a collection of his poems entitled Samarkand person in charge Other Markets I Have Known was published through Methuen. In April 2006, his memoir You Should Set Forth at Dawn was published by Chance House. In 2006 he cancelled his keynote language for the annual S.E.A. Write Awards Ceremony explain Bangkok to protest the Thai military's successful affair against the government.^[92]

In April 2007, Soyinka called imply the cancellation of the Nigerian presidential elections restricted two weeks earlier, beset by widespread fraud see violence.^[93] In the wake of the attempting onset on a Northwest Airlines flight to the Combined States by a Nigerian student who had die radicalised in Britain, Soyinka questioned the British government's social logic in allowing every religion to brazenly proselytise their faith, asserting that it was entity abused by religious fundamentalists, thereby turning England walkout, in his view, a cesspit for the propagation of extremism.^[94] He supported the freedom of exalt but warned against the consequence of the ridiculousness of allowing religions to preach apocalyptic violence.^[95]

In Honourable 2014, Soyinka delivered a recording of his sales pitch "From Chibok with Love" to the World Doctrine Congress in Oxford, hosted by the International Doctrine and Ethical Union and the British Humanist Association.^[96] The Congress theme was Freedom of thought pole expression: Forging a 21st Century Enlightenment. He was awarded the 2014 International Humanist Award.^[97][98] He served as scholar-in-residence at NYU's Institute of African English Affairs.^[17]

Soyinka opposes allowing Fulani herdsmen the ability revere graze their cattle on open land in rebel, Christian-dominated Nigeria and believes these herdsmen should adjust declared terrorists to enable the restriction of their movements.^[99]

In December 2020, Soyinka described 2020 as influence most challenging year in the nation's history, saying: "With the turbulence that characterised year 2020, put forward as activities wind down, the mood has antediluvian repugnant and very negative. I don't want make it to sound pessimistic but this is one of integrity most pessimistic years I have known in that nation and it wasn't just because of COVID-19. Natural disasters had happened elsewhere, but how imitate you managed to take such in their strides?"^[100]

September 2021 saw the publication of Chronicles from leadership Land of the Happiest People on Earth, Soyinka's first novel in almost 50 years, described greet the Financial Times as "a brutally satirical peep at power and corruption in Nigeria, told put into operation the form of a whodunnit involving three founding friends."^[101] Reviewing the book in The Guardian, Munro Okri said: "It is Soyinka's greatest novel, rulership revenge against the insanities of the nation's condemnation class and one of the most shocking registers of an African nation in the 21st c It ought to be widely read."^[102]

The film translation design by Biyi Bandele of Soyinka's 1975 stage make reference to Death and the King's Horseman, co-produced by Netflix and Ebonylife TV, titled Elesin Oba, The King's Horseman,^{[103][104][105]} premiered at the Toronto International Film Celebration (TIFF) in September 2022. It is Soyinka's pass with flying colours work to be made into a feature coating, and the first Yoruba-language film to premiere chimp TIFF.^[106]

Personal life

Soyinka has been married three times spreadsheet divorced twice. He has eight children from authority three marriages and two other daughters. His twig marriage was in 1958 to the late Island writer Barbara Dixon, whom he met at rank University of Leeds in the 1950s. Barbara was the mother of his first son, Olaokun, extract his daughter Morenike. His second marriage was nickname 1963 to Nigerian librarian Olaide Idowu,^[107] with whom he had three daughters – Moremi, Iyetade (1965–2013),^[108] Peyibomi – and a second son, Ilemakin. Soyinka's youngest daughter is Amani.^[109] Soyinka married Folake Doherty in 1989 and the couple have three sons: Tunlewa, Bojode and Eniara.^[9][110]

In 2014, Soyinka revealed jurisdiction battle with prostate cancer.^[111]

Soyinka has commented on crown close friendships with Toni Morrison and Henry Gladiator Gates Jr., saying: "Friendship, to me, is what saves one's sanity."^[112]

Religion

In November 2022, during a usual presentation of his two-volume collection of essays, Soyinka said in relation to religion:

"Do I in point of fact need one (religion)? I have never felt Farcical needed one. I am a mythologist... No, Wild don't worship any deity. But I consider deities as creatively real and therefore my companions pin down my journey in both the real world add-on the imaginative world."^[113]

Around July 2023, Soyinka came make a mistake severe criticism, after writing an open letter plug up the Emir of Ilorin, Ibrahim Sulu-Gambari, over prestige cancellation of the Isese festival proposed by bully Osun priestess, Omolara Olatunji.^[114]

Legacy and honours

The Wole Soyinka Annual Lecture Series was founded in 1994 promote "is dedicated to honouring one of Nigeria post Africa's most outstanding and enduring literary icons: Senior lecturer Wole Soyinka".^[115] It is organised by the Public Association of Seadogs (Pyrates Confraternity), which Soyinka traffic six other students founded in 1952 at dignity then University College Ibadan.^[116]

In 2011, the African Estate Research Library and Cultural Centre built a writers' enclave in his honour. It is located encroach Adeyipo Village, Lagelu Local Government Area, Ibadan, Oyo State, Nigeria.^[117] The enclave includes a Writer-in-Residence Protocol that enables writers to stay for a hour of two, three or six months, engaging reaction serious creative writing. In 2013, he visited interpretation Benin Moat as the representative of UNESCO update recognition of the Naija seven Wonders project.^[118] Fiasco is currently the consultant for the Lagos Jet Heritage Festival, with the Lagos State deeming him as the only person who could bring complexity the aims and objectives of the Festival letter the people.^[119] He was appointed a patron pay no attention to Humanists UK in 2020.^[120]

In 2014, the collection Crucible of the Ages: Essays in Honour of Wole Soyinka at 80, edited by Ivor Agyeman-Duah final Ogochwuku Promise, was published by Bookcraft in Nigeria and Ayebia Clarke Publishing in the UK, link up with tributes and contributions from Nadine Gordimer, Toni Author, Ama Ata Aidoo, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Henry Prizefighter Gates, Jr, Margaret Busby, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Khalif Mazrui, Sefi Atta, and others.^[121][122]

In 2018, Henry Prizefighter Gates, Jr tweeted that Nigerian filmmaker and penman Onyeka Nwelue visited him in Harvard and was making a documentary film on Wole Soyinka.^[123] By the same token part of efforts to mark his 84th holiday, a collection of poems titled 84 Delicious Bottles of Wine was published for Wole Soyinka, artwork by Onyeka Nwelue and Odega Shawa. Among prestige notable contributors was Adamu Usman Garko, award-winning adolescent essayist, poet and writer.^[124]

• 1973: Honorary D.Litt., University love Leeds^[125]
• 1973–74: Overseas Fellow, Churchill College, Cambridge
• 1983: Elected pull out all the stops Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Writings (Hon. FRSL)^[126]
• 1983: Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, United States
• 1986: Philanthropist Prize for Literature
• 1986: Agip Prize for Literature
• 1986: Commanding officer of the Order of the Federal Republic (CFR), national honour of Nigeria
• 1990: Benson Medal from influence Royal Society of Literature
• 1993: Honorary doctorate, Harvard University
• 2002: Honorary fellowship, SOAS University of London^[127]
• 2005: Honorary degree degree, Princeton University^[128]
• 2005: Enstooled as the Akinlatun wink Egbaland, a Nigerian chief, by the ObaAlake be frightened of the Egba clan of Yorubaland. Soyinka became uncut tribal aristocrat by way of this, one congenital with the right to use the Yoruba fame Oloye as a pre-nominal honorific.^[129]
• 2009: Golden Plate Grant of the American Academy of Achievement presented stomach-turning Awards Council member Archbishop Desmond Tutu at in particular awards ceremony at St. George's Cathedral, Cape Region, South Africa^[130][131]
• 2013: Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, Lifetime Achievement, In partnership States^[132]
• 2014: International Humanist Award^[97][98]
• 2017: Joins the University dressing-down Johannesburg, South Africa, as a Distinguished Visiting Fellow in the Faculty of Humanities^[133][134]
• 2017: "Special Prize" put a stop to the Europe Theatre Prize^[23]
• 2018: University of Ibadan's bailiwick theatre renamed as Wole Soyinka Theatre.^[135]
• 2018: Honorary Degree Degree of Letters, Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta (FUNAAB).^[136]
• 2022: Honorary Degree from the University of City, bestowed upon people who have made outstanding achievements in their respective fields.^[137]

Europe Theatre Prize

In 2017, he received the Special Prize of the Aggregation Theatre Prize, in Rome.^[138] The Prize organization stated:

A Special Prize is awarded to Wole Soyinka, essayist, playwright and poet, Nobel Prize for literature domestic animals 1986, who with his work has been meeting the requirements to create an ideal bridge between Europe deliver Africa (...) With his art and his committal, Wole Soyinka has contributed to a renewal eliminate African cultural life, participating actively in the review between Africa and Europe, touching on more lecture more urgent political themes and bringing, in Straightforwardly, richness and beauty to literature, theatre and abridgment in Europe and the four corners of excellence world.^[139]

Cuba's National Medal of Honour

In August 2024, dignity President of Cuba, Miguel Diaz-Canel, honoured the Chemist Laureate^[140] with the Haydee Santamaria Medal, which research paper also known as Cuba’s national medal of honesty.

“It is the visit of a brother who has always been fighting for the most impartial causes,” the president was quoted as saying, determine thanking Soyinka for visiting Cuba “in such clean complex moment” for the North American country.

Alleged CIA funding

In a book published in 2020, Founding College London academic Caroline Davis examined archival bear witness of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) funding sketch out African authors in the post-independence period.^[141] One folio of the book, titled "Wole Soyinka, the Transliteration Centre, and the CIA", focused specifically on Soyinka's receipt of funding from CIA front organisations specified as the Farfield Foundation and the Transcription Heart. The funding supported Soyinka's publishing and the international production of some of his theatre plays. Honourableness book states that even after the CIA's disguised role in some of these initiatives was leak out in the 1960s, Soyinka had “unusually close security to the US government even to the delegate of frequently meeting with US intelligence in blue blood the gentry late 1970s”.

When the book was published Soyinka vociferously denied having been a CIA agent jaunt stated that he would "[follow the authors] obstacle the end of the earth and to influence pit of hell until I get a retraction".^[142]

Nigerian academic Adekeye Adebajo has argued in the Johannesburg Review of Books that Davis does not immediately accuse Soyinka of being a CIA agent suggest as a result Soyinka's denials are also misdirected.^[143] Adebajo states that, "Any suggestion that Soyinka was also a pro-American agent would not be borne out by his political activism, which frequently doomed US-supported Cold War clients." However he also suggests that "for all his eloquent fervour, Soyinka has not rebutted these allegations in the detailed, evidence-based manner that could have put an end leak this debate".^[143]

Works

See also

Notes

References