The well known Author, poet and playwright Akinwande Oluwole “Wole” Babatunde Soyinka was born on 13 July 1934 as the second of six children, in the city of Abẹokuta, Ogun State in Nigeria to Samuel Ayodele Soyinka and Grace Eniola Soyinka. His father was an Anglican minister and the headmaster of St. Peters School in Abẹokuta which made him to be raised in a religious home but he became an atheist later in life. His mother was the daughter of Rev. Canon J. J. Ransome-Kuti which made Wole the cousin of popular musician Fela Kuti, the human rights activist Beko Ransome-Kuti, politician Olikoye Ransome-Kuti and activist Yemisi Ransome-Kuti.
Education
Primary
St. Peters Primary School, Abeokuta,
Secondary
Abeokuta Grammar School (won several prizes for literary composition) – 1940
Government College, Ibadan – 1946 – 1952
Tertiary
University College Ibadan, affiliated with the University of London – studied English literature, Greek, and Western history (1952–54)
While he was a student in the university, he and six others founded the Pyrates Confraternity, an anti-corruption and justice-seeking student organisation, the first confraternity in Nigeria.
Read: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Biography
Marital life and Family
Soyinka’s marital life is not that straight, he has married three times and divorced twice. All the three marriages produced children, his first wife name was Barbara Dixon whom he met at the University of Leeds in the 1950s and the marriage gave birth to his first son Olaokun. In 1963, he married a librarian Olaide Idowu, with whom he had three daughters, Moremi, Iyetade (deceased), Peyibomi, and a second son, Ilemakin. Soyinka married Folake Doherty in 1989.
Plays
His play’s are so many, here are the complete list some of it;
Keffi’s Birthday Treat (1954)
The Invention (1957)
The Swamp Dwellers (1958)
A Quality of Violence (1959)
The Lion and the Jewel (1959)
The Trials of Brother Jero
A Dance of the Forests (1960)
My Father’s Burden (1960)
The Strong Breed (1964)
Before the Blackout (1964)
Kongi’s Harvest (1964)
The Road (1965)
Madmen and Specialists (1970)
The Bacchae of Euripides (1973)
Camwood on the Leaves (1973)
Jero’s Metamorphosis (1973)
Death and the King’s Horseman (1975)
Opera Wonyosi (1977)
Requiem for a Futurologist (1983)
Sixty-Six (short piece) (1984)
A Play of Giants (1984)
Childe Internationale (1987)
From Zia with Love (1992)
The Detainee (radio play)
A Scourge of Hyacinths (radio play)
The Beatification of Area Boy (1996)
Document of Identity (radio play, 1999)
King Baabu (2001)
Etiki Revu Wetin
Alapata Apata (2011)
See More People From Ogun State
Poetry
Idanre and other poems (1967)
A Big Airplane Crashed Into The Earth (original title Poems from Prison) (1969)
A Shuttle in the Crypt (1971)
Ogun Abibiman (1976)
Mandela’s Earth and other poems (1988)
Early Poems (1997)
Samarkand and Other Markets I Have Known (2002)
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Novels
The Interpreters (1964)
Season of Anomy (1972)
