Born July 13, 1934, Abeokuta, Nigeria
![Wole Soyinka, 2000.
[Credit: Sean Gallup/Getty Images]](http://cache-media.britannica.com/eb-media/97/82297-003-4D7B5128.gif "Wole Soyinka, 2000.
[Credit: Sean Gallup/Getty Images]")
Nigerian playwright and political activist who received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986. He sometimes wrote of modern West Africa in a satirical style, but his serious intent and his belief in the evils inherent in the exercise of power usually was evident in his work as well.
A member of the Yoruba people, Soyinka attended Government College and University College in Ibadan before graduating in 1958 with a degree in English from the University of Leeds in England. Upon his return to Nigeria, he founded an acting company and wrote his first important play, A Dance of the Forests (produced 1960; published 1963), for the Nigerian independence celebrations. The play satirizes the fledgling nation by stripping it of romantic legend and by showing that the present is no more a golden age than was the past…
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