Wole Soyinka
1967: Head of the Department of Theater Arts, University of Ibadan; June: "The Writer in a Modern African State;" August to October 1969 imprisoned for writings sympathetic to secessionist Biafra; September: The Lion and the Jewel produced Accra; November: Trials of Brother Jero and The Strong Breed produced, Greenwich Mews Theatre, New York; Idanre and Other Poems.
April 1968: Kongi's Harvest, produced by Negro Ensemble Company, New York.
February 1969: The Road produced by Theatre Limited, Kampala, Uganda; Poems from Prison, London.
August 1970: Completes and directs Madmen and Specialists with Ibadan University Theare Arts Company in New Haven, Connecticut (at Yale?); play tours to Harlem; directs plays by Pirandello and others; Kongi's Harvest (film).
1971: A Shuttle in the Crypt (poems); March: revives Madmen and Specialists in Ibadan; acts Patrice Lumumba in John Littlewood's French production of Conor Cruise O'Brien's Murderous Angels, Paris; testifies before Kazeem Enquiry on violation of students' rights.
1972: Publishes his prison notes, The Man Died, London; July: produces extracts from A Dance of the Forests in Paris.
1973: Honorary Ph. D., University of Leeds; Season of Anomy (novel); Collected Plays I; August: National Theatre, London, produces Bacchae of Euripides, which it commissioned.
1973-74: Overseas Fellow, Churchill College, Cambridge, and Visiting Professor of English, University of Sheffield; Collected Plays II.
1975: Edited Poems of Black Africa, London and New York; "Neo-Tarzanism: The Poetics of Pseudo-Tradition" (essay); attacks Idi Amin in Transition.
1976: Ogun Abibiman (poems); Myth, Literature, and the African World; Visiting Professor, Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana, Legon; Professor, University of Ife; September: Nairobi High School production of A Dance of the Forests; October: French production of A Dance of the Forests, Dakar, Gambia; December: produces Death and the King's Horseman, Ife.
1978: "Language as Boundary" (essay).
1981: Aké: The Years of Childhood (autobiography); Opera Wonyosi, an adaptation of Brecht's Three Penny Opera; "The Critic and Society: Barthes, Leftocracy, and Other Mythologies" (essay).
1982: Blues for the Prodigal (film) released; "Cross Currents: The 'New African' after Cultural Encounters" (essay).
1983: Anisfield-Wolf Book Award.
December 1983: Die Still, Rev. Dr. Godspeak (radio play); Requiem for a Futurologist (play) produced at Ife university; Blues for a Prodigal (film); "Shakespeare and the Living Dramatist" (essay); (July) - Unlimited Liability Company (phonograph recording).
1984: A Play of Giants (play).
1985: Requiem for a Futorologist published; "Climates of Art" (Herbert Read Memorial Lecture), Institute of Contemporary Art, London.
1986: Nobel Prize for Literature. "The External Encounter: Ambivalence in African Arts and Literature" (essay), A Play of Giants (play), Fellow, Society for the Humanities, Cornell University; Agip Prize for Literature; 1986 (October); Awarded of Nigeria's second highest honour, Commander of the Federal Republic, CFR.;
1987: Six Plays; Childe Internationale (play) republished.
1989: "The Search" (short story).
1991: Sisi Clara Workshop on Theatre (Lagos); A Scourge of Hyacinths (radio play) BBC African Service; "The Credo of Being and Nothingness" (The First Rev. Olufosoye Annual Lecture in Religion, delivered at the University of Ibadan on January 25 1991; published.
1992: From Zia With Love.
1993: honorary doctorate, Harvard University.
1994: Ibadan: The Penkelemes Years (A Memoir: 1946-1965) (autobiography); Memories of a Nigerian Childhood; Flees Nigeria (November).
1995: The Beatification of Area Boy.
1996: The Open Sore of a Continent: A Personal Narrative of the Nigerian Crisis.
March 1997: Charged with treason by military dictatorship. Considered one of Africa's poets alongside Cesair, Senghor, Ohaeto, B'tek, Okigbo, Ohanyido, Okara, Clark and so forth. [2]
2004: Reith Lecturer for BBC Radio 4, discussing A Climate of Fear.
2005: Together with Nigerian elder statesman Chief Anthony Enahoro, he convened an alternative national confab under the aegis of PRONACO (Pro -national conference group). On 26 November 2005 he was conferred with the chieftaincy title of Akinlatun of Egbaland by the Alake (King) of the Egba people of Yorubaland where he hails from.
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Trivia
- Wole Soyinka is a cousin of the famous African Musician Fela Kuti.
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See also
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References
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External links
- [3] Interview with BBC Africa Beyond about his new memoir, You Must Set Forth At Dawn
- [4] Interview with Black Britain about the state of democracy in Nigeria
- Transcript and audio of Deutschlandradio Kultur interview with Soyinka, June 13, 2006, German/English
- Transcript and audio of interview with Democracy Now!
- Second part of interview on Democracy Now!
- The Responsibility of a Hero An essay about a Soyinka speech given partially about Louis Farrakhan at a theater conference
- Study guide for The Lion and the Jewel, The Trials of Brother Jero, and Madmen and Specialists
- Reith Lectures 2004 given by Soyinka on 'The Climate of Fear'
- Encyclopedia.com entry
- Interview with Soyinka at UC Berkeley
- Interview with Soyinka in Mother Jones
- Short biography, brief excerpt, list of works, and links
- UNLV faculty biography
- Wole Soyinka. All you want to know about
- The Wole Soyinka Society
- Interview with Wole Soyinka, online at CBC Words at Large (audio)
- Article about Freedom of Speech commissioned to mark 75th anniversary of the BBC World Service
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