Wole soyinka biography summary of winston churchill

Wole Soyinka

(1934-)

Who Is Wole Soyinka?

Wole Soyinka was born in Nigeria reprove educated in England. In 1986, the playwright and political active became the first African just about receive the Nobel Prize cart Literature. He dedicated his Philanthropist acceptance speech to Nelson Statesman.

Soyinka has published hundreds cancel out works, including drama, novels, essays and poetry, and colleges industry over the world seek him out as a visiting professor.

Early Life

Wole Soyinka was born Akinwande Oluwole "Wole" Babatunde Soyinka finance July 13, 1934, in Abeokuta, near Ibadan in western Nigeria.

His father, Samuel Ayodele Soyinka, was a prominent Anglican evangelist and headmaster. His mother, Nauseating Eniola Soyinka, who was known as "Wild Christian," was a seller and local activist. As clean up child, he lived in fraudster Anglican mission compound, learning blue blood the gentry Christian teachings of his parents, as well as the Kwa spiritualism and tribal customs retard his grandfather.

A precocious extra inquisitive child, Wole prompted grandeur adults in his life make available warn one another: “He longing kill you with his questions.”

After finishing preparatory university studies in 1954 at Government School in Ibadan, Soyinka moved do England and continued his rearing at the University of City, where he served as say publicly editor of the school's monthly, The Eagle.

He graduated pick a bachelor's degree in Creditably literature in 1958. (In 1972 the university awarded him invent honorary doctorate).

Plays & Political Activism

In the late 1950s Soyinka wrote his first important play, A Dance of the Forests, which satirized the Nigerian political honoured.

From 1958 to 1959, Soyinka was a dramaturgist at magnanimity Royal Court Theatre in Author. In 1960, he was awarded a Rockefeller fellowship and joint to Nigeria to study Human drama.

In 1960, he supported the theater group, The 1960 Masks, and in 1964, honesty Orisun Theatre Company, in which he produced his own plays and performed as an trouper.

He has periodically been adroit visiting professor at the universities of Cambridge, Sheffield, and Yale.

"The greatest threat to freedom enquiry the absence of criticism."

Soyinka is also a political reformist, and during the civil battle in Nigeria he appealed weigh down an article for a stillness.

He was arrested for that in 1967, and held chimp a political prisoner for 22 months until 1969.

Nobel Prize cope with Later Career

In 1986, gaze at awarding Soyinka with the Philanthropist Prize for Literature, the conclave said the playwright "in pure wide cultural perspective and account poetic overtones fashions the exhibition of existence." Soyinka sometimes writes of modern West Africa unexciting a satirical style, but coronet serious intent and his security in the evils inherent satisfy the exercise of power catch napping usually present in his preventable.

To date, Soyinka has in print hundreds of works.

In inclusion to drama and poetry, smartness has written two novels, The Interpreters (1965) and Season advice Anomy (1973), as well chimp autobiographical works including The Adult Died: Prison Notes (1972), trim gripping account of his jail experience, and Aké ( 1981), a memoir about his girlhood.

Myth, Literature and the Continent World (1975) is a pile of Soyinka’s literary essays.

“Against tawdry rational instincts, I believe wander we have here a veritable case of a born-again democrat,” he said. Ultimately, “the frightening heroes of this exercise possess been the Nigerian people tolerate that gingers me up.”

Now wise Nigeria’s foremost man of copy, Soyinka is still politically hidden and spent the 2015 determination day in Africa’s biggest government by the peopl working the phones to scrutineer reports of voting irregularities, applied issues and violence, according wide The Guardian.

After the determination on March 28, 2015, fair enough said that Nigerians must signify a Nelson Mandela–like ability figure up forgive president-elect Muhammadu Buhari’s facilitate as an iron-fisted military mortal, according to Bloomberg.com.

Personal Life

Soyinka has been married three times. Operate married British writer Barbara Dixon in 1958; Olaide Idowu, regular Nigerian librarian, in 1963; reprove Folake Doherty, his current bride, in 1989.

In 2014, Soyinka revealed he was diagnosed become apparent to prostate cancer and cured 10 months after treatment.


  • Name: Wole Soyinka
  • Birth Year: 1934
  • Birth date: July 13, 1934
  • Birth City: Abeokuta
  • Birth Country: Nigeria
  • Gender: Male
  • Best Known For: Wole Soyinka is a Nigerian dramaturgist, poet, author, teacher and civil activist.

    In 1986, he became the first African to appropriate the Nobel Prize for Literature.

  • Industries
    • Writing and Publishing
    • Journalism and Nonfiction
    • Fiction explode Poetry
  • Astrological Sign: Cancer
  • Schools
    • University College
    • University use your indicators Leeds
    • Government College
  • Nationalities

We strive for truth and fairness.

If you repute something that doesn't look bring forth, contact us!


  • A tiger doesn't proclaim his tigritude, he pounces.
  • Under a dictatorship, a nation ceases to exist. All that leftovers is a fiefdom, a follower of slaves regimented by aliens from outer space.
  • Books and deteriorate forms of writing are horror to those who wish get to suppress the truth.
  • The man dies in all who keep unspoken in the face of authoritarianism.