Wole Soyinka

I think Norton mentions him some in the introduction for Achebe, so I thought I would make a post about Wole Soyinka, a Nigerian playwright who is probably the most well-known 20th century Nigerian writer after Achebe. He was born in 1934 and was the son of a Anglican minister and headmaster, so his family had adopted some elements of the British colonial culture. He grew up in a Yoruba community that followed many traditional Yoruban religious beliefs, though, so he experienced this cultural mix when he was growing up. Soyinka was successful in school and eventually pursued studies in theater in England, where he wrote his first plays. He would later return to Nigeria to produce plays in his home country, many of which attacked corruption in the newly independent government, but he faced lots of criticism for his plays which were attacked by some as too Western by some and too critical of the government by the government. He continued to be politically active until he was eventually arrested and later forced into self-exile in 1971. In 1986, he became the first African writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Like Achebe, he is considered a postcolonial writer, and several of his works deal with conflict between British colonialism and traditional Nigerian culture. The Lion and the Jewel, one of his early plays, advocates for a return to traditional African culture in a story about two men, Baroka and Lakunle, who are both trying to marry the same girl. His 1975 play Death and the King's Horseman is based on a true historical event in which a horseman of a Yoruban king was prevented from committing a ritual suicide by British officials following the death of the king. Soyinka depicts the shame brought upon the horseman and subsequent disruption of the community (almost a sort of Great Chain of Being kind of thing). Later, the horseman's son commits suicide upon returning to his home country after studying medicine in Europe in an attempt to restore order, but the play ends ambiguously, with the implication being that this was insufficient. I hope this post gives some insight to another Nigerian writer from the 20th century who shares some similarities but also differs in significant ways from Achebe. Here's a link to an article about Soyinka: https://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/soyinka/