The Nobel Prize in Literature 1986 was awarded to Wole Soyinka "who in a wide cultural perspective and with poetic overtones fashions the drama of existence."


https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1986/summary/

The 3 genres of literature are known to be:
-Prose
-Play (Drama)
-Poetry

Past winners have been awarded based on their works on the totality of the 3 genres or their mastery of 1 or more genres.

Wole Soyinka won due to his works on Play (Drama) and Poetry, and his wider perspective in expressing his genius.

The reason for awarding other winners of the Nobel Literature Prize prior to 1986 and after 1986, can also be found in the link below.

https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/lists/all-nobel-prizes-in-literature

Since you know the simple reason why he won the Nobel Price in literature, you can as well use same simple reason to win yours.

excel101:
Since you know the simple reason why he won the Nobel Price in literature, you can as well use same simple reason time win yours.

musa fires bazuka. word!

The main reason Soyinka won the Nobel was his plays, especially, Death and the King's Horseman, The Lion and the Jewel, A Dance of the Forests, and Kongi's Harvest, plus his supreme mastery of English displayed in novels/books such as The Interpreters, The Man Died, and Ake, The Years of Childhood.

Based on the above masterpieces of literature, he was a most deserved recipient of the Nobel in 1986.

excel101:
Since you know the simple reason why he won the Nobel Price in literature, you can as well use same simple reason to win yours.

Una dey fight before?

The colonialists dashed Wole Soyinka Nobel Prize to slight Chinua Achebe. Wole Soyinka played onto the dance floor organized by the liberal groups of Europeans and USA. The liberal groups are the fronts setup by the colonialists. Wole was not a novelist yet he was give Nobel prize in literature.

Dedetwo:
The colonialists dashed Wole Soyinka Nobel Prize to slight Chinua Achebe. Wole Soyinka played onto the dance floor organized by the liberal groups of Europeans and USA. The liberal groups are the fronts setup by the colonialists. Wole was not a novelist yet he was give Nobel prize in literature.

He is a novelist. He wrote The Interpreters and Season of Anomy. He is also a playwright, poet and essayist.

Amazing profile of a genius:

Wole Soyinka is a Nigerian playwright, poet and essayist. He was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature, the first African to be honoured in that category.

.. In 1954, he 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 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.

Soyinka has been a strong critic of successive Nigerian governments.... Much of his writing has been concerned with "the oppressive boot and the irrelevance of the colour of the foot that wears it". During the regime of General Sani Abacha (1993–98), Soyinka escaped from Nigeria on a motorcycle via the "NADECO Route." Abacha later proclaimed a death sentence against him "in absentia." With civilian rule restored to Nigeria in 1999, Soyinka returned to his nation.

In Nigeria, Soyinka was a Professor of Comparative Literature (1975 to 1999) at the Obafemi Awolowo University, then called the University of Ife. With civilian rule restored to Nigeria in 1999, he was made professor emeritus. While in the United States, he first taught at Cornell University as Goldwin Smith professor for African Studies and Theatre Arts from 1988 to 1991 and then at Emory University, where in 1996 he was appointed Robert W. Woodruff Professor of the Arts. Soyinka has been a Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and has served as scholar-in-residence at New York University's Institute of African American Affairs and at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California, US.

He has also taught at the universities of Oxford, Harvard and Yale. Soyinka was also a Distinguished Scholar in Residence at Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, in 2008.

In December 2017, he was awarded the Europe Theatre Prize in the "Special Prize" category awarded to someone who has “contributed to the realization of cultural events that promote understanding and the exchange of knowledge between peoples”.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wole_Soyinka

Dedetwo:
The colonialists dashed Wole Soyinka Nobel Prize to slight Chinua Achebe. Wole Soyinka played onto the dance floor organized by the liberal groups of Europeans and USA. The liberal groups are the fronts setup by the colonialists. Wole was not a novelist yet he was give Nobel prize in literature.

Whoever said the Nobel Literature Prize must be given to only novelists?

Do you understand at all that there are 3 genres of literature and Wole Soyinka produced works in all the 3 genres?

Prose
Play (Drama)
Poetry

Are you saying with all the education I put up there in the OP and the references from the Nobel website that describes why Soyinka was specifically awarded the 1986 prize and why others before and after him were also awarded the prize, you remain ignorant and stuck in the mud of your "Achebe is great" emotions?

Dedetwo:
The colonialists dashed Wole Soyinka Nobel Prize to slight Chinua Achebe. Wole Soyinka played onto the dance floor organized by the liberal groups of Europeans and USA. The liberal groups are the fronts setup by the colonialists. Wole was not a novelist yet he was give Nobel prize in literature.

Are the below Nobel Literature Prize awardees before and after Soyinka all Novelist? Soyinka set himself apart in Play and Poetry. Like some have said, he carved a Shakespearean niche for himself with his Plays (Drama). Not many people have won the Nobel Literature Prize with Play as their genius.

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1996
Wislawa Szymborska “for poetry that with ironic precision allows the historical and biological context to come to light in fragments of human reality”

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1995
Seamus Heaney “for works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth, which exalt everyday miracles and the living past”

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1994
Kenzaburo Oe “who with poetic force creates an imagined world, where life and myth condense to form a disconcerting picture of the human predicament today”

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1993
Toni Morrison “who in novels characterized by visionary force and poetic import, gives life to an essential aspect of American reality”

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1992
Derek Walcott “for a poetic oeuvre of great luminosity, sustained by a historical vision, the outcome of a multicultural commitment”

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1991
Nadine Gordimer “who through her magnificent epic writing has – in the words of Alfred Nobel – been of very great benefit to humanity”

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1990
Octavio Paz “for impassioned writing with wide horizons, characterized by sensuous intelligence and humanistic integrity”

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1989
Camilo José Cela “for a rich and intensive prose, which with restrained compassion forms a challenging vision of man’s vulnerability”

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1988
Naguib Mahfouz “who, through works rich in nuance – now clear-sightedly realistic, now evocatively ambiguous – has formed an Arabian narrative art that applies to all mankind”

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1987
Joseph Brodsky “for an all-embracing authorship, imbued with clarity of thought and poetic intensity”

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1986
Wole Soyinka “who in a wide cultural perspective and with poetic overtones fashions the drama of existence”

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1985
Claude Simon “who in his novel combines the poet’s and the painter’s creativeness with a deepened awareness of time in the depiction of the human condition”

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1984
Jaroslav Seifert “for his poetry which endowed with freshness, sensuality and rich inventiveness provides a liberating image of the indomitable spirit and versatility of man”

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1983
William Golding “for his novels which, with the perspicuity of realistic narrative art and the diversity and universality of myth, illuminate the human condition in the world of today”

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1982
Gabriel García Márquez “for his novels and short stories, in which the fantastic and the realistic are combined in a richly composed world of imagination, reflecting a continent’s life and conflicts”

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1981
Elias Canetti “for writings marked by a broad outlook, a wealth of ideas and artistic power”

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1980
Czeslaw Milosz who with uncompromising clear-sightedness voices man’s exposed condition in a world of severe conflicts”

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1979
Odysseus Elytis “for his poetry, which, against the background of Greek tradition, depicts with sensuous strength and intellectual clear-sightedness modern man’s struggle for freedom and creativeness”

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1978
Isaac Bashevis Singer “for his impassioned narrative art which, with roots in a Polish-Jewish cultural tradition, brings universal human conditions to life”

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1977
Vicente Aleixandre “for a creative poetic writing which illuminates man’s condition in the cosmos and in present-day society, at the same time representing the great renewal of the traditions of Spanish poetry between the wars”

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1976
Saul Bellow “for the human understanding and subtle analysis of contemporary culture that are combined in his work”

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1975
Eugenio Montale “for his distinctive poetry which, with great artistic sensitivity, has interpreted human values under the sign of an outlook on life with no illusions”

https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/lists/all-nobel-prizes-in-literature

Things Fall Apart mehn