Wole Soyinka

Akinwande Oluwole Babatunde Soyinka, born July 13, 1934, in Abeokuta, Nigeria, is a Nigerian playwright whose career also spans poetry and fiction, with twenty-five plays, three novels, ten collections of short stories, seven poetry collections and five memoirs to his name. In 1986 he became the first African writer to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, honored by the Nobel committee for what it called his wide cultural perspective and poetic overtones fashioning the drama of existence. Among his most celebrated plays are The Swamp Dwellers (1958), The Lion and the Jewel (1959) and Death and the King's Horseman, and his work repeatedly explores Nigerian history, culture and political struggle through satire and drama.