One of America’s most prestigious honors – The Medal of Honor for literature from the National Arts Club is to be presented to Nigerian novelist Professor Chinua Achebe on November, 16, 2007, in New York City.


The Medal of Honor of The National Arts Club honors the achievement of the author chosen annually by the Literary Committee Members. The Club's membership has included three presidents, and some of the most important artists and arts patrons in America . Presidents Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson and Dwight D. Eisenhower were all members of the National Arts Club.

Please i want to know If Wole Soyinka's Nobel Prize supercedes this honor.
Both are luminaries, but one supercedes the other, who do you think between Prof Wole Soyinka and Prof Chinua Achebe?

Prof. Chinua Achebe has made US his base and the American society is reaping the harvest of his genius and so they have to appreciate him.

The greatest literary honour is the Nobel Prize for Literature and Prof. Wole Soyinka was the first African writer to win it in 1986 when he was only 52 years old.

Prof. Chinua Achebe is yet to win the Nobel Prize for Literature and even if he wins it later, it would only be given to him as a consolation, because on the corpus of literary works, Achebe has not done as much as Prof. Wole Soyinka.

Lest we forget, that Achebe wrote his best two novels when he was under 30, namely Things Fall Apart and Arrow of God. The novels he wrote later have not been impressive and his books of essays have not appreciated.

Prof. Wole Soyinka has written great plays, translated classical plays into English, wrote outstanding novels of great intellectual depth, translated Yoruba classic plays into English, published great works of poetry, autobiograpical works, essays, and other works on Radio, and even on film. He sponsored the first Christopher Okigbo Prize and has been active in the proactive human rights and social political initiatives in Nigeria and other parts of world.
Therefore the works of his genius have appreciated since the 1960s to date.

Prof.Wole Soyinka is the greatest African writer of all time.
There are other great African writers who have won the Nobel Prize for Literature after Wole Soyinka and there works have universal perspectives than Prof. Chinua Achebe's ethnic novels.

Achebe's fame and fortune rest on only two of his few novels.
It is unfortunate that Achebe has not been able to write better novels since Things Fall Apart and Arrow of God.

Ben Okri may win the Nobel Prize before Achebe, because like Wole Soyinka, Ben Okri has written great novels, plays, collections of poems, short stories and essays and he is still writing great novels since he was 18.

What happened to Achebe's genius in his 40s, 50s and 60s?
His genius suffered from the Law of Diminishing Returns?

Achebe should have written better and greater novels than Things Fall Apart since 1960 to date. But he has not done so.

We went through a horrible and terrible civil war that was enough to make Achebe write the great Nigerian novel, but he did not do so.

Wole Soyinka is a universal writer of many great books.
Achebe is an African writer of two good novels and some other works of fiction and non-fiction.

Please NAIRALANDERS i read Things fall Apart long ago, and till date is one of the best african novels i have seen with respect to other notable books.

But to ascribe Achebe works as an African and Syinka universal calls for intellectual debate.

The NOBEL PRIZE FOR LITERATURE is the highest honor given to writer which Soyinka is the first African to win, Achebe is yet to win. But does that take away anything that the man is good.

My argument is considering the books we have read vis a vis which is the most special.

My best Is Things fall Apart

I loved Chinua Achebe's "Arrow of God".
In fact, Achebe said that he would not be able to choose between "Things Fall Apart" and "Arrow of God".

Dont think he said so@orikinla, when I read that novel, The Arrow of . . . , he wrote that the novel was the one that he would be caught reading. I think what he meant that his second novel was his favorite.

Thank you Ndipe.

"Arrow of God" has not been given the approval it deserves.