CHINUA ACHEBE &WOLE SOYINKA

CHINUA ACHEBE 

    Chinua Achebe was born in 1930 in Nigeria and died at the age of 82 in Boston, Massachusetts. Achebe is known for his unapologetic representations of how Western cultures have influenced African cultures in negative ways. Achebe grew up in a colonized country, as Britain exercised control over Nigeria from the 1800s to 1960. Through his writing, Achebe criticized the British government's attempts to replace Nigerian culture with British culture.

          Achebe studied in Africa, where he also worked in broadcasting and co-founded a publishing company. Achebe toured the United States for the first time in 1969 along with writers Gabriel Okara and Cyprian Ekwensi. From there, Achebe returned to teach at the University of Nigeria, manage publishing companies, and continue writing. He eventually moved to the United States and taught at esteemed colleges until his death.

      Chinua Achebe made a splash with the publication of his first novel, Things Fall Apart, in 1958. Renowned as one of the seminal works of African literature, it has since sold more than 20 million copies and been translated into more than 50 languages. Achebe followed with novels such as No Longer at Ease (1960), Arrow of God (1964) and Anthills of the Savannah (1987), and served as a faculty member at renowned universities in the U.S. and Nigeria. 

   The groundbreaking novel " Things Fall apart" ,centered on the clash between native African culture, the influence of white Christian missionaries and the colonial government in Nigeria. An unflinching look at the discord, the book was a startling success and became required reading in many schools across the world.

     Achebe won several awards over the course of his writing career, including the Man Booker International Prize (2007) and the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize (2010). Additionally, he received honorary degrees from more than 30 universities around the world.

 

  WOLE SOYINKA 

He was born in Nigeria in 1934, Wole Soyinka lived on a missionary compound where he learned the Christian ways of his parents and the Yoruba ways of his paternal grandfather. The culture and language of the Yoruba is the basis for much of Soyinka's writing. This culture played a large role in the work that would be the mainstay of his social and political voice.

He was educated in his primary years in the British system, and later at the University of Leeds, where he graduated with a degree in English. He was an excellent student, and became the editor of the school's magazine, The Eagle.

    During the civil war in Nigeria, Soyinka appealed in an article for cease-fire. For this he was arrested in 1967, accused of conspiring with the Biafra rebels, and was held as a political prisoner for 22 months until 1969. Soyinka has published about 20 works: drama, novels and poetry. He writes in English and his literary language is marked by great scope and richness of words.

       

     He wrote his first play during his time in London, The Swamp Dwellers and The Lion and the Jewel (a light comedy), which were performed at Ibadan in 1958 and 1959 and were published in 1963. Later, satirical comedies are The Trial of Brother Jero (performed in 1960, publ. 1963) with its sequel, Jero’s Metamorphosis (performed 1974, publ. 1973), A Dance of the Forests (performed 1960, publ.1963), Kongi’s Harvest (performed 1965, publ. 1967) and Madmen and Specialists (performed 1970, publ. 1971). Among Soyinka’s serious philosophic plays are (apart from “The Swamp Dwellers“) The Strong Breed (performed 1966, publ. 1963), The Road ( 1965) and Death and the King’s Horseman (performed 1976, publ. 1975). In The Bacchae of Euripides (1973), he has rewritten the Bacchae for the African stage and in Opera Wonyosi (performed 1977, publ. 1981), bases himself on John Gay’s Beggar’s Opera and Brecht’s The Threepenny Opera. Soyinka’s latest dramatic works are A Play of Giants (1984) and Requiem for a Futurologist (1985).

     Soyinka has written two novels, The Interpreters (1965), narratively, a complicated work which has been compared to Joyce’s and Faulkner’s, in which six Nigerian intellectuals discuss and interpret their African experiences, and Season of Anomy (1973) which is based on the writer’s thoughts during his imprisonment and confronts the Orpheus and Euridice myth with the mythology of the Yoruba. Purely autobiographical are The Man Died: Prison Notes (1972) and the account of his childhood, Aké ( 1981), in which the parents’ warmth and interest in their son are prominent. Literary essays are collected in, among others, Myth, Literature and the African World (1975).

    Soyinka’s poems, which show a close connection to his plays, are collected in Idanre, and Other Poems (1967), Poems from Prison (1969), A Shuttle in the Crypt (1972) the long poem Ogun Abibiman (1976) and Mandela’s Earth and Other Poems (1988).

   

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