zameen: Pls don't quote me, i'm coming back to make a meaningful comment and if I don't, let it be known that i'm the first to grace this precious thread.

OH YES INDEED....ITS A LUVLY THREAD.....A LIVING LEGEND

naptu2:

What's the difference between a fraternity, eg The Kappa Alpha Society and a youth gang, eg The Crips?

Fraternity fight for equal right and against oppression. The miscontruing of this by some break away fraternity from the original PC made it to change its name to Seadogs and pull out of campuses.
In my undergraduate days in OAU, Ile-Ife, even till date we have groups that functions like fraternities. Examples are Movement for Social Justice (MSJ), Afrika Forward Movement (AFORM), Pace Setters, Democratic Socialist Movement (DSM), etc. They build the mind of students through lectures, call for paper, etc. It is only sound minds that are welcome.

Ola Johnson:
Fraternity fight for equal right and against oppression. The miscontruing of this by some break away fraternity from the original PC made it to change its name to Seadogs and pull out of campuses.
In my undergraduate days in OAU, Ile-Ife, even till date we have groups that functions like fraternities. Examples are Movement for Social Justice (MSJ), Afrika Forward Movement (AFORM), Pace Setters, Democratic Socialist Movement (DSM), etc. They build the mind of students through lectures, call for paper, etc. It is only sound minds that are welcome.

Exactly! My point is, Wole Soyinka started a fraternity, which he still associates with today. Some other people started youth gangs, which have nothing to do with Wole Soyinka and which he has never associated with. The two are not the same. A fraternity is different from a youth gang.

naijababe:

Damn nucca! Why are you always so on point?! You forgot the Lion and the Jewel! How could you?!

As for those screaming about Achebe's being non-radical, pick up the his Criticism of Conrad Black's Heart of Darkness, it is a small book. In fact you can refer to it as a pamphlet, maybe it will help you get some perspective.

RIP Achebe!!!!

Long live Oluwole Soyinka

Thanks very much. My apologies for not mentioning The Lion and The Jewel (it's probably because I haven't read it yet). I also forgot to mention that Achebe was, for many years, the editor of the African Writers Series.

freecocoa: I said I wasn't going to call people names this year but you are making me go against what I planned and believe me, God will hold you responsible for what I'm about to say, here goes...

You are the most f00lish person to have ever walked the face of the earth, keep forming cultist, them go shoot you throway if you no wan help yourself, he ruined your life and he won a nobel prize for that whereas you that is the reason for him winning that prize is a school dropout, the irony.

Ewu somalia, mscheew.

chaii.. lwkmd

Read later, busy now.

Ola Johnson:
Read the "Things Fall Apart" you've made much hype about. He was portraying what sociologists would call culture shock. Besides, the relationship between the Africans and the Whites here was majorly on religion, not colonialism. In history we're taught Europeans came in three separate groups (ie the three Cs) at different times. The Cs are: commerce, christianity and colonialism; in that order. So by historical arrangement, christianity only came as a way percifying Africans who had been traumatized by commerce (slave trade) and to prepare the way for colonialism which started in late 19th century and early 20th century. Please, when next you read place history side by side African literature.

Cultural shock ke, I read economics man and I know wat cultural shock is ( I picked all my electives from sociology), cultural shock is wat happens when a people come in contact with cultures alien to theirs. For instance when u walk into a community where animal blood is drunk or flesh is eaten raw, u experience cultural shock. Wat is so culturally shocking about the fact that the europeans came to impose themselves on the igbos who already had their own system of government. That is an epitome of colonialism not cultural shock and that is wat he was sublimely kicking against in his book. As for ur invitation, ill tink about it.

funkybaby: @ iyaniwura

well done! very interesting write up.

i have learnt so many new things about wole soyinka.

i honestly never (knew) he was an ijebu man

You mean up till now, you dont realize that as the Yoruba race STANDOUT, the "IJEBU" is even more OUTSTANDING?

Hmmmmm ...you think it is for nothing that "our brothers" fear them like Viper-snake?
Sentiments apart, the I.Q of an 'average Ijebu person' is four times that of the 'average Nigerian'!


Dont murder me abegii, l am not Ijebu naah!

Lastpage!

lastpage:
You mean up till now, you dont realize that as the Yoruba race STANDOUT, the "IJEBU" is even more OUTSTANDING? [/b]

Hmmmmm ...you think it is for nothing that "our brothers" fear them like Viper-snake?
Sentiments apart, the I.Q of an 'average Ijebu person' is four times that of the 'average Nigerian'!


Dont murder me abegii, l am not Ijebu naah!

Lastpage!

lastpage: [color=#990000]
Sentiments apart, the I.Q of an 'average Ijebu person' is four times that of the 'average Nigerian'!
Lastpage!

GBAM !

well said !

Nice piece, but I didn't get to read anything concerning how he formed ehmmm...*phones a friend* Bello: what is the name of that cult group Soyinka formed?
Op, pls get prepared 2 edit the post and add my answer o

Nice piece, but I didn't get to read anything concerning how he formed ehmmm...*phones a friend* Bello: what is the name of that cult group Soyinka formed?
Op, pls get prepared 2 edit the post and add my answer o, make e for dey' all encompassing

njokusboy:

Cultural shock ke, I read economics man and I know wat cultural shock is ( I picked all my electives from sociology), cultural shock is wat happens when a people come in contact with cultures alien to theirs. For instance when u walk into a community where animal blood is drunk or flesh is eaten raw, u experience cultural shock. Wat is so culturally shocking about the fact that the europeans came to impose themselves on the igbos who already had their own system of government. That is an epitome of colonialism not cultural shock and that is wat he was sublimely kicking against in his book. As for ur invitation, ill tink about it.

The contact between the Igbo and the Europeans was to a large extent on religious ground.

[size=28pt]Dear Poster,

1. Yes, Prof. Wole Soyinka is the first African and only Nigerian presently and (not ever) to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. Other Nigerian authors will win it and one of them has a British passport. His name is Ben Okri.

2. Wole Soyinka may be Africa’s most successful playwright and dramatist in literary terms, but not on the live stage.
South African playwrights have made more money from their plays than Wole Soyinka.

3. Wole Soyinka is NOT the world’s most famous Nigerian).
More people across the social strata and cultures know Queen of Nollywood Genevieve Nnaji and soccer star Kanu Nwankwo more than Wole Soyinka.
Only students of literature and other educated people know him and lest you forget majority of Africans and others in the world are uneducated.
All the millions of Nigerians who have not been to school are more than the educated minority and these legions of illiterates among Hausas and other ethnic groups in the middle belt and northern regions don't know Wole Soyinka.
Chinua Achebe did not win the Nobel Prize, but he was more famous than Wole Soyinka until he passed away.
Achebe's books have been translated into more languages than Wole Soyinka's books and 'Things Fall Apart" alone has sold more copies than all the books of Wole Soyinka since 1958 to date. And still outselling other Nigerian books on Amazon and other book stores.
I am an authority of this. So, stop misinforming the ignorant and gullible trolls and others on this website and other sites.

4. The greatest writer from Africa to date is South Africa's J. M. Coetzee, a novelist, essayist, linguist, translator and recipient of the 2003 Nobel Prize in Literature. And the only African and the first writer to win the Booker Prize twice; first for "Life & Times of Michael K" in 1983, and again for "Disgrace" in 1999.

Coetzee has been described as "inarguably the most celebrated and decorated" living writer in the Anglosphere.Before receiving the 2003 Nobel Prize in Literature, he was awarded the CNA Prize (thrice), the Prix Femina Étranger, The Irish Times International Fiction Prize and the Booker Prize (twice), among other accolades.

I hope you know what is Anglosphere?

There are too many Olodos and Ode n tele Afas on Nairaland.

PLEASE, READ MORE AND RESEARCH MORE BEFORE POSTING THINGS ON THE INTERNET. [/size]

Wole soyinka is an illustrious Nigerian and a great Achiever. He is a living legend.

Inik: Wole soyinka is an illustrious Nigerian and a great Achiever. He is a living legend.

[size=18pt]Yes and he said this of Orikinla:

Dear 'Orikinla'

Quickly to thank you for news of yourself and your literary achievement. I shall now look out for your books to add to my reading list.[/size]

Ola Johnson:
Take or leave it, you're suffering from Soyinkaphobia.
Sentiment apart Wole Soyinka is far better than Chinua Achebe. Soyinka is a prolific writer (writes novels, poems and drama). While JP Clark is know for peotry, Ola Rotimi for drama, Chinua Achebe for novel (mostly fictions); Soyinka is known for all. He is seen in the same level with Williams Shakespeare whom the literary says he shares the same initials (WS) with. Apart from these, Soyinka is an activist and essayist. As an activist, he fights bad government. Whereas Achebe spoke only when Igbo people are affected, Soyinka speaks for everybody. As an essayist, he bares his mind on topical issues. For example during the same-sex bill controversy in the Senate, he wrote "Sexual Minority And Legislative Zealotry". This makes Soyinka to be known even by those that don't read books. Try this, ask or show a junior secondary school student Soyinka's picture, he will say he sees him on TV and newspapers. Apart from when Achebe rejected the national honours, controvercy from his last book and now, his death; how many times have you heard his name on the news.
The cure to your Soyinkaphobia is reasoning.

1000,000,000,000 likes.

Perfect.

lastpage:
You mean up till now, you dont realize that as the Yoruba race STANDOUT, the "IJEBU" is even more OUTSTANDING? [/b]

Hmmmmm ...you think it is for nothing that "our brothers" fear them like Viper-snake?
[size=18pt]Sentiments apart, the I.Q of an 'average Ijebu person' is four times that of the 'average Nigerian'! [/size]


Dont murder me abegii, l am not Ijebu naah!

Lastpage!

@ the bolded - let 'em know, uncle...

Proud Ijebu boy - we gatts it up there and we're natural merchants!!

We put naija on the world map!!

Ijebu boy!!

Beautiful expose' on Wole Soyink. Beautiful!

shymexx:

@ the bolded - let 'em know, uncle...

Proud Ijebu boy - we gatts it up there and we're natural merchants!!

We put naija on the world map!!

Ijebu boy!!

yes oh.

tell them bro

Life from google/ wikipeadia:

Akinwande Oluwole "Wole" Soyinka (born 13 July 1934) is a Nigerian writer, notable especially as a playwright and poet; he was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature, the first person in Africa and the diaspora to be so honoured.
Soyinka was born into a Yoruba family in Abeokuta. After study 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 struggle for independence from Great Britain. 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.[1]
Soyinka has strongly criticised many Nigerian military dictators, especially late General Sanni Abacha, as well as other political tyrannies, including the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe. Much of his writing has been concerned with "the oppressive boot and the irrelevance of the colour of the foot that wears it".[citation needed] During the regime of General Sani Abacha (1993–98), Soyinka escaped from Nigeria via the "Nadeco Route" on a motorcycle. Living abroad, mainly in the United States, he was a professor first at Cornell University and then at Emory University in Atlanta, where in 1996 he was appointed Robert W. Woodruff Professor of the Arts. Abacha proclaimed a death sentence against him "in absentia". With civilian rule restored to Nigeria in 1999, Soyinka returned to his nation. He has also taught at the universities of Oxford, Harvard and Yale.
From 1975 to 1999, he was a Professor of Comparative Literature at the Obafemi Awolowo University, then called the University of Ife. With civilian rule restored in 1999, he was made professor emeritus.[1] Soyinka has been a Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. In the fall of 2007 he was appointed Professor in Residence at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California, US.[1]

Ola Johnson:
Take or leave it, you're suffering from Soyinkaphobia.
Sentiment apart Wole Soyinka is far better than Chinua Achebe. Soyinka is a prolific writer (writes novels, poems and drama). While JP Clark is know for peotry, Ola Rotimi for drama, Chinua Achebe for novel (mostly fictions); Soyinka is known for all. He is seen in the same level with Williams Shakespeare whom the literary says he shares the same initials (WS) with. Apart from these, Soyinka is an activist and essayist. As an activist, he fights bad government. Whereas Achebe spoke only when Igbo people are affected, Soyinka speaks for everybody. As an essayist, he bares his mind on topical issues. For example during the same-sex bill controversy in the Senate, he wrote "Sexual Minority And Legislative Zealotry". This makes Soyinka to be known even by those that don't read books. Try this, ask or show a junior secondary school student Soyinka's picture, he will say he sees him on TV and newspapers. Apart from when Achebe rejected the national honours, controvercy from his last book and now, his death; how many times have you heard his name on the news.
The cure to your Soyinkaphobia is reasoning.

Works

Plays
The Swamp Dwellers
The Lion and the Jewel
The Trials of Brother Jero
A Dance of the Forests
The Strong Breed
Before the Blackout
Kongi's Harvest
The Road
The Bacchae of Euripides
Madmen and Specialists
Camwood on the Leaves
Jero's Metamorphosis
Death and the King's Horseman
Opera Wonyosi
Requiem for a Futurologist
A Play of Giants
A Scourge of Hyacinths (radio play)
The Beatification of Area Boy
King Baabu
Etiki Revu Wetin
Sixty Six (short piece)[18]

Novels
The Interpreters
Season of Anomie

Memoirs
The Man Died: Prison Notes (1971)
Aké: The Years of Childhood (1981)
Isara: A Voyage around Essay (1990)
Ibadan: The Penkelemes Years: a memoir 1946-65 (1994)
You Must Set Forth at Dawn (2006)

Poetry collections
A Big Airplane Crashed Into The Earth (original title Poems from Prison)
Idanre and other poems
Mandela's Earth and other poems (1988)
Ogun Abibiman
Samarkand and Other Markets I Have Known
Abiku
The Ballad of the Landlord
After the Deluge
Prisonnettes
Telephone Conversation

Essays
Neo-Tarzanism: The Poetics of Pseudo-Transition
Art, Dialogue, and Outrage: Essays on Literature and Culture
Myth, Literature and the African World
From Drama and the African World View
The Burden of Memory – The Muse of Forgiveness
The Credo of Being and Nothingness
A Climate of Fear

Movies
Kongi's Harvest
Culture in Transition
Blues for a Prodigal

[edit] Translations
Forest of a Thousand Daemons. ISBN 9780872866300


Just to buttress your claim. Very hardworking man....and still working at 79years

Orikinla: [size=28pt]Dear Poster,

1. Yes, Prof. Wole Soyinka is the first African and only Nigerian presently and (not ever) to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. Other Nigerian authors will win it and one of them has a British passport. His name is Ben Okri.

2. Wole Soyinka may be Africa’s most successful playwright and dramatist in literary terms, but not on the live stage.
South African playwrights have made more money from their plays than Wole Soyinka.

3. Wole Soyinka is NOT the world’s most famous Nigerian).
More people across the social strata and cultures know Queen of Nollywood Genevieve Nnaji and soccer star Kanu Nwankwo more than Wole Soyinka.
Only students of literature and other educated people know him and lest you forget majority of Africans and others in the world are uneducated.
All the millions of Nigerians who have not been to school are more than the educated minority and these legions of illiterates among Hausas and other ethnic groups in the middle belt and northern regions don't know Wole Soyinka.
Chinua Achebe did not win the Nobel Prize, but he was more famous than Wole Soyinka until he passed away.
Achebe's books have been translated into more languages than Wole Soyinka's books and 'Things Fall Apart" alone has sold more copies than all the books of Wole Soyinka since 1958 to date. And still outselling other Nigerian books on Amazon and other book stores.
I am an authority of this. So, stop misinforming the ignorant and gullible trolls and others on this website and other sites.

4. The greatest writer from Africa to date is South Africa's J. M. Coetzee, a novelist, essayist, linguist, translator and recipient of the 2003 Nobel Prize in Literature. And the only African and the first writer to win the Booker Prize twice; first for "Life & Times of Michael K" in 1983, and again for "Disgrace" in 1999.

Coetzee has been described as "inarguably the most celebrated and decorated" living writer in the Anglosphere.Before receiving the 2003 Nobel Prize in Literature, he was awarded the CNA Prize (thrice), the Prix Femina Étranger, The Irish Times International Fiction Prize and the Booker Prize (twice), among other accolades.

I hope you know what is Anglosphere?

There are too many Olodos and Ode n tele Afas on Nairaland.

PLEASE, READ MORE AND RESEARCH MORE BEFORE POSTING THINGS ON THE INTERNET. [/size]

From this response, it is clear that you are far better than Soyinka. Who are you? Are you a professor? Highly intelligent. Look at your references. Not common. You may have read more than that professor they claimed to be the most popular. Thanks. But why have you not been educating us before this this time?

wow!!! This is the very first time I am privileged to read about his personal life. He did well to hide it.Kudos to iyaniwura, u did a great job. A very long story but was enable to read it.

I'm not sure he traced his sisters path to school at 2 and a half years as stated. Memory may be a bit foggy. Maybe 5 or 6 years. That would make more sense.

logica: I'm not sure he traced his sisters path to school at 2 and a half years as stated. Memory may be a bit foggy. Maybe 5 or 6 years. That would make more sense.

At 5 years he would have been eligible for school anyway (the criteria for eligibility used to be that you were either 5 years old, or you could touch your left ear with your right hand).

naptu2:

At 5 years he would have been eligible for school anyway (the criteria for eligibility used to be that you were either 5 years old, or you could touch your left ear with your right hand).

In an era when most children were stunted and started school at 8/9? Or you think a 2 and a half year old child can TRACE the path his sister followed to school?

logica: In an era when most children were stunted and started school at 8/9? Or you think a 2 and a half year old child can TRACE the path his sister followed to school?

1) Quite a few kids did start school at age 8/9, but other kids also started school at 5.

2) In the interview I watched, he said he FOLlOWED her to school (which is not impossible).

gratiaeo: Wow! Is he a writer? How come his books is not popular? Abeg, what is the names of his book so i can grab my copy tomorrow

you dis olodo!