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Abayomi Awelewa, Lecturer in African and African Diasporan Literature, University of Lagos

Wole Soyinka's life of writing holds Nigeria up for scrutiny

Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka. Thomas Samson/AFP via Getty Images

Akinwande Oluwole Babatunde Soyinka, known simply as Wole Soyinka, can’t be easily described. He is a teacher, an ideologue, a scholar and an iconoclast, an elder statesman, a patriot and a culturalist.

The Nigerian playwright, novelist, poet and essayist is a giant among his contemporaries. In 1986, he became the first sub-Saharan African, and is one of only five Africans, to be awarded the Nobel prize for literature. This was in recognition of the way he “fashions the drama of existence”.

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