WOLE SOYINKA:KONGI @ 90. Part 1, Works and Awards
Soyinka attended Government College in Ibadan, and
subsequently University College Ibadan and the University of Leeds in England.
After studying in Nigeria and the UK, he worked with the Royal Court Theatre in
London. He went on to write plays that were produced in both countries, in
theatres and on radio. He took an active role in Nigeria's political history
and its campaign for independence from British colonial rule. In 1965, he
seized the Western Nigeria Broadcasting Service studio and broadcast a demand
for the cancellation of the Western Nigeria Regional Elections. In 1967, during
the Nigerian Civil War, he was arrested by the federal government of General
Yakubu Gowon and put in solitary confinement for two years, for volunteering to
be a non-government mediating actor.
Soyinka was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986,
becoming the first African laureate.
Soyinka, popularly called “Kongi” by fans and admirers, did
not get the Nobel Laurel on a platter of gold. His many works spoke for him.
His recognitions and awards were not limited to the Nobel Laurel. They are
myriad. I doubt if there is more decorated literary giant in the black world.
Professor Wole Soyinka’s list of literary works is long and
varied.
PLAYS
1. Keffi's Birthday Treat (1954)
2. The Invention (1957)
3. The Swamp Dwellers (1958)
4. A Quality of Violence (1959)[138]
5. The Lion and the Jewel (1959)
6. The Trials of Brother Jero (1960)
7. A Dance of the Forests (1960)
8. My Father's Burden (1960)
9. The Strong Breed (1964)
10. Before the Blackout (1964)
11. Kongi's Harvest (1964)
12. The Road (1965)
13. Madmen and Specialists (1970)
14. The Bacchae of Euripides (1973)
15. Camwood on the Leaves (1973)
16. Jero's Metamorphosis (1973)
17. Death and the King's Horseman (1975)
18. Opera Wonyosi (1977)
19. Requiem for a Futurologist (1983)
20. A Play of Giants (1984)
21. Childe Internationale (1987)[139][140]
22. From Zia with Love (1992)
23. The Detainee (radio play)
24. A Scourge of Hyacinths (radio play)
25. The Beatification of the Area Boy (1996)
26. Document of Identity (radio play, 1999)
27. King Baabu (2001)
28. Etiki Revu Wetin
29. Alapata Apata (2011)
30.
"Thus
Spake Orunmila" (in Sixty-Six Books (2011)
Novels
1. The Interpreters (1965)
2. Season of Anomy (1973)
3. Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest
People on Earth (Bookcraft, Nigeria; Bloomsbury, UK; Pantheon, US,( 2021)
4. Harmattan Haze on an African Spring
SHORT
STORIES
1. A Tale of Two (1958)
2. Egbe's Sworn Enemy (1960)
3. Madame Etienne's Establishment (1960)
MEMOIRS
1. The Man Died: Prison Notes (1972)
2. Aké: The Years of Childhood (1981)
3. Ibadan: The Penkelemes Years: a memoir
1945–1965 (1989)
4. Ìsarà: A Voyage around Essay (1989)
5. You Must Set Forth at Dawn (2006)
6. Climate of Fear (Literature) (2005)
POETRY
COLLECTIONS
1. Telephone Conversation (1963) (appeared in
Modern Poetry in Africa)
2. Idanre and other poems (1967)
3. A Big Airplane Crashed into The Earth
(original title Poems from Prison) (1969)
4. A Shuttle in the Crypt (1971)
5. Ogun Abibiman (1976)
6. Mandela's Earth and other poems (1988)
7. Early Poems (1997)
8. Samarkand and Other Markets I Have Known
(2002)
ESSAYS
1. Towards a True Theater (1962)
2. Culture in Transition (1963)
3. Neo-Tarzanism: The Poetics of
Pseudo-Transition
4. A Voice That Would Not Be Silenced
5. Art, Dialogue, and Outrage: Essays on
Literature and Culture (1988)
6. From Drama and the African World View
(1976)
7. Myth, Literature, and the African World
(1976)
8. The Blackman and the Veil (1990)
9. The Credo of Being and Nothingness (1991)
10. The Burden of Memory – The Muse of Forgiveness
(1999)
11. A Climate of Fear (the BBC Reith Lectures
2004, audio and transcripts)
12. New Imperialism (2009)
13. Of Africa (2012)
14. Beyond Aesthetics: Use, Abuse, and
Dissonance in African Art Traditions (2019)
FILMS
1. Kongi's Harvest
2. Culture in Transition
3. Blues for a Prodigal
4. Translations
5. The Forest of a Thousand Demons: A Hunter's
Saga (1968; a translation of D. O. Fagunwa's Ògbójú Ọdẹ nínú Igbó Irúnmalẹ̀)
6. In the Forest of Olodumare (2010; a
translation of D. O. Fagunwa's Igbo Olodumare)
The many works of Soyinka has earned him a sea of awards and prizes and recognitions.
The biggest of them is the Alfred Nobel Price. A Special
Prize was awarded to Wole Soyinka, writer, playwright and poet, Nobel Prize for
literature in 1986, who with his work has been able to create an ideal bridge
between Europe and Africa. With his art and his commitment, Wole Soyinka has
contributed to a renewal of African cultural life, participating actively in the
dialogue between Africa and Europe, touching on more and more urgent political
themes and bringing, in English, richness and beauty to literature, theatre and
action in Europe and the four corners of the world.
Some of the others are:
1. 1973: Honorary D.Litt., University of Leeds
2. 1973–74: Overseas Fellow, Churchill
College, Cambridge
3. 1983: Elected an Honorary Fellow of the
Royal Society of Literature (Hon. FRSL)
4. 1983: Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, United
States
5. 1986: Nobel Prize for Literature
6. 1986: Agip Prize for Literature
7. 1986: Commander of the Order of the Federal
Republic (CFR), national honour of Nigeria
8. 1990: Benson Medal from the Royal Society
of Literature
9. 1993: Honorary doctorate, Harvard
University
10. 2002: Honorary fellowship, SOAS University
of London
11. 2005: Honorary doctorate degree, Princeton
University
12. 2005: Enstooled as the Akinlatun of
Egbaland, a Nigerian chief, by the Oba Alake of the Egba clan of Yorubaland.
Soyinka became a tribal aristocrat by way of this, one vested with the right to
use the Yoruba title Oloye as a pre-nominal honorific
13. 2009: Golden Plate Award of the American
Academy of Achievement presented by Awards Council member Archbishop Desmond
Tutu at an awards ceremony at St. George's Cathedral, Cape Town, South Africa
14. 2013: Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, Lifetime
Achievement, United States
15. 2014: International Humanist Award
16. 2017: Joins the University of Johannesburg,
South Africa, as a Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Faculty of
Humanities
17. 2017: "Special Prize" of the
Europe Theatre Prize
18. 2018: University of Ibadan's arts theatre
renamed as Wole Soyinka Theatre.
19. 2018: Honorary Doctorate Degree of Letters,
Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta (FUNAAB).
20. 2022: Honorary Degree from Cambridge
University, bestowed upon people who have made outstanding achievements in
their respective fields
21. Europe Theatre Prize
22. In 2017, he received the Special Prize of
the Europe Theatre Prize, in Rome.
Though he considered
himself primarily a playwright, Soyinka also wrote the novels The Interpreters
(1965), Season of Anomy (1973), and Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest
People on Earth (2021), the latter of which drew particular praise for its
satirical take on corruption in Nigeria.
Soyinka clocks Ninety on July 13th 2024.
COMING NEXT
THE LIFE AND PERSON
OF KONGI: PROFESSOR WOLE SOYINKA FROM CRADLE TO NINETY
(Only in THE
KALEIDOSCOPE MAGAZINE)
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