Wole Soyinka was born on 13 July 1934 at Abeokuta, near Ibadan in western
Nigeria.
After preparatory university studies in 1954 at Government College in Ibadan,
he continued at the University of Leeds, where later in 1973 he took his
doctorate.
During the six years spent in England, he was a dramaturgist at the Royal
Court Theatre in London 1958-1959. In 1960, he was awarded a Rockefeller bursary
and returned to Nigeria to study African drama.
During the civil war in Nigeria, Soyinka appealed in an article for
cease-fire, for this he was arrested in 1967, accused of conspiring with the
Biafra rebels, and was held as a political prisoner for 22 months until 1969.
Soyinka has published about 20 works: drama, novels and poetry. He writes in
English and his literary language is marked by great scope and richness of
words.
Soyinka has been influenced by, among others, the Irish writer, J.M. Synge,
but links up with the traditional popular African Theatre with its combination
of dance, music, and action.
He bases his writing on the mythology of his own tribe-the Yoruba-with Ogun,
the god of iron and war, at the center. He wrote his first plays during his time
in London.
Soyinka’s poems, which show a close connection to his plays, are collected in
Idanre, and Other Poems (1967), Poems from Prison (1969), A Shuttle in the Crypt
(1972) the long poem Ogun Abibiman (1976) and Mandela’s Earth and Other Poems
(1988).
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