Wole Soyinka at the PWF 2006

After working for the Royal Court Theater in London, he returned to Nigeria, where he founded “The 1960 Masks”, the group that performed his first major play, A Dance of the Forests. Though Soyinka writes in English, his work is deeply influenced by the myths and history of his homeland. Rather than eschewing modernist European techniques, he uses them as a forum for his exploration of ancient African tradition and legend, opening the way for “self-retrieval, cultural recollection, and cultural security”.

Soyinka was arrested for the first time in 1965 for allegedly seizing control of Western Radio studios and making an illegal broadcast challenging the official results of the recent elections. He was aquitted, but re-arrested in 1967 for his oppositionist writings. He was imprisoned for 22 months, much of it spent in solitary confinement.

“I annointed my flesh / Thought is hallowed in the lean / Oil of solitude / I call you forth, all, upon /Terraces of light. Let the dark / Withdraw.”

Soyinka is not limited by genre. He is the author of over twenty books, including The Interpreters and Season of Anomy, books of poetry such as AShuttle in the Crypt, Idanre, Mandela’s Earth, and Samarkand and Other Markets I Have Known, the collection of essays entitled Art, Dialogue, and Outrage, and autobiographical works such as Aké: The Years of Childhood.

He was awarded the Nobel prize (1986) because he is a writer "who in a wide cultural perspective and with poetic overtones fashions the drama of existence"

Wole Soyinka currently lives in Las Vegas, Nevada.