ABSTRACT
Since his first emphatic emergence on the literary scene in Nigeria in 1960
– the year of the nation’s independence – Wole Soyinka has successfully
combined the roles of dramatist, actor, director, novelist, poet, memorialist,
critic and agent provocateur. His policy of deliberate non-alignment dur-
ing the Civil War of 1966-71 landed him in prison for several months in
Kaduna and Lagos, an experience that he described in his memoir The
Man Died (1972), and he has since maintained an unremitting resistance
to the corruption and oppression of a number of regimes. Other phases of
his lively and alert existence have been covered in successive volumes of
near-autobiography: in Aké: The Years of Childhood (1981), in the part-
fictional Isara: A Voyage Around Essay (1990), and in Ibadan: The
Penkelemes Years (1994). Early in his career Soyinka published two
novels: The Interpreters (1965) was a fictional account of his generation,
and Season of Anomy (1973) an allegory of civil conflict. But it is as a
playwright that he is mostly known to the world at large. Rejected by an
official committee, A Dance of the Forests (1960) was an alternative to
the formal Nigerian independence celebrations, and he has since produced
and published over fifteen plays, notably The Road (1965), Kongi’s Har-
vest (1965), Madmen and Specialists (1971), A Play of Giants (1984)
and A Scourge of Hyacinths (1992).
