Soyinka, Wole (Vol. 5) - Soyinka, Wole 1934–
Soyinka, Wole 1934–
A Nigerian playwright, novelist, translator, and poet, Soyinka brings to his work a balance of both African and European influences. (See also Contemporary Authors, Vols. 13-16, rev. ed.)
What marks Soyinka and Armah so strongly is their unwillingness to fall back on the past as a solution for present-day social and political problems, and their interest, instead, in the current-day scene, the immediate. When Soyinka's drama, A Dance of the Forests, was presented at the Nigerian Independence celebrations in 1960, it, indeed, denigrated the glorious African past and warned Nigerians and all Africans that their energies henceforth should be spent trying to avoid repeating the mistakes that have already been made. Kongi's Harvest (Soyinka's last play prior to the Nigerian Civil War) was a scathing condemnation of the recklessness of post-independent African political leaders, and Soyinka's two years in prison...
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