Wole Soyinka (1934- ), Nigerian dramatist and probably Africa's most versatile author, educated at the universities of Ibdan and Leeds. He was play reader at the Royal Court Theatre, where The Swamp Dwellers (1958), The Lion and the Jewel and The Invention (both 1959) were produced. These already demonstrated his development from simple Nigerian village comedies to a more complex and individual drama incorporating mime and dance. Back in Nigeria from 1960, a variety of university posts and the opportunity of producing and acting in his own plays gave him he self-confidence to undertake even more daring innovations, e.g. A Dance of the Forests (1960), a half-satirical, half-fantastic celebration of Nigerian independence. Soyinka's first novel, The Interpreters (1965), captures the idealism of young Nigerians regarding the development of a new Africa - possibly anticipating a new Biafra. In prison for pro-Biafran activity during 1967-9, he produced increasingly bleak verse and prose, Madmen and Specialists (1970), and his second novel, Season of Anomy. A brighter period has followed. Death and the King's Horseman (1975), embodies his post-Biafran cultural philosophy, enunciated in Myth, Literature and the African World (1976), of the need for the distinct aesthetics of Africa and Europe to cross-fertilize each other. He is professor of comparative literature at the University of Ife, Nigeria. He holds an honorary Doctorate of letters from Yale University, and has been accorded major literary prizes in England. He has also published a memoir The Man Died and a work of criticism Myth, Literature and the African World. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1986.
