Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Soyinka, Wole (Vol. 179) - Alan Jacobs (essay date November-December 2001)

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Alan Jacobs (essay date November-December 2001)

SOURCE: Jacobs, Alan. “Wole Soyinka's Outrage: The Divided Soul of Nigeria's Nobel Laureate.” Books & Culture 7, no. 6 (November-December 2001): 28-31.

[In the following essay, Jacobs provides a critical overview of Soyinka's life and work, praising Soyinka's “comprehensive genius” and asserting that he regards Soyinka as one of the greatest living writers.]

1

Like many teachers of literature, I am sometimes asked to name the Greatest Living Writer. (I can hear the capital letters in the voices of those who ask.) Invariably I name two candidates: the Polish-Lithuanian poet Czeslaw Milosz and the Nigerian playwright Wole Soyinka. These names are usually greeted by puzzlement, for, though both have won the Nobel Prize for Literature—Milosz in 1980 and Soyinka in 1986—and both have been on The McNeil-Lehrer Newshour, neither has entered the American public...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Bruce King (essay date spring 1988)
   2. Reed Way Dasenbrock (review date summer 1989)
   3. Michael Thorpe (review date autumn 1989)
   4. Christopher Hope (review date 11 December 1989)
   5. Reed Way Dasenbrock (review date summer 1990)
   6. C. N. Ramachandran (essay date August 1990)
   7. Derek Wright (essay date September 1990)
   8. Anjali Roy and Viney Kirpal (essay date autumn 1991)
   9. Derek Wright (essay date winter 1992)
   10. Onookome Okome (review date spring 1993)
   11. Adebayo Williams (essay date spring 1993)
   12. Adewale Maja-Pearce (review date 24 February 1995)
   13. Henry Louis Gates Jr. (essay date spring 1995)
   14. James Gibbs (review date spring 1995)
   15. Sean O'Brien (review date 10 November 1995)
   16. James Gibbs (review date summer 1996)
   17. Makau wa Mutua (review date summer 1996)
   18. Jeff Thomson (essay date summer 1996)
   19. Peter L. Berger (review date December 1996)
   20. Wole Soyinka, Olesegun Ojewuyi, and Shawn-Marie Garrett (interview date spring 1997)
   21. Abiodun Onadipe (review date April 1997)
   22. Landeg White (review date 13 June 1997)
   23. David Rieff (review date 16 June 1997)
   24. Peter Nazareth (review date autumn 1997)
   25. Patrick Colm Hogan (essay date winter 1998)
   26. Olufemi Vaughan (review date December 1998)
   27. David Caute (review date 23 January 1999)
   28. Stephen Howe (review date 5 February 1999)
   29. James Gibbs (review date summer 2000)
   30. Elizabeth Heger Boyle (review date October-December 2000)
   31. Andrea J. Nouryeh (essay date winter 2001)
   32. Alan Jacobs (essay date November-December 2001)
   33. Yaw Adu-Gyamfi (essay date fall 2002)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright

1. Wole Soyinka