Wole Soyinka is a playwright, poet, novelist, and essayist. A Yoruba born in Western Nigeria and educated in Ibadan, and Leeds Universiy England, Soyinka was the first African to win the Nobel Prize in Literature – in 1986. He has authored over forty works in the medium of plays, novels, poetry, essays, and biographies, many of which have received world-wide translations and theatre performances. He is active on artistic, academic and human rights organisations such as the International Theatre Institute, UNESCO, the International Parliament of Writers etc. He is recipient of numerous academic and national honours, and holds traditional titles in his own country. Soyinka continues to lecture extensively within Nigeria and internationally, and currently holds positions as Emeritus Professor at Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria, Hutchins Fellow, Harvard University, USA, and Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge, UK.

‘The Lion and the Jewel’ and ‘Death and the King’s Horseman’ are among his most celebrated plays while his poems are collected in ‘Idanre’, ‘Mandela’s Earth and Other Poems’, ‘Samarkand and Other Markets I Have Known’. His autobiographical works encompassing childhood, youth and adult political and literary activities comprise: ‘Ake, The Years of Childhood’, ‘Ibadan: The Penkelemes Years’, ‘You Must Set Forth at Dawn’.  His corpus of prose fiction – ‘The Interpreters’ and ‘Season of Anomie’ – was recently augmented with his latest novel – ‘Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth’.

Learn more about Wole Soyinka and the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature.