The Enduring Voice of Wole Soyinka

V8 N3The Enduring Voice of Wole SoyinkaEditor's Foreword • Wale Lawal

‘The Enduring Voice of Wole Soyinka’ celebrates the 90th birthday of Wole Soyinka and considers his influence on literature, African thought, plus more.

On Wole Soyinka

Wale LawalAugust 25, 2024

‘The Enduring Voice of Wole Soyinka’ celebrates the 90th birthday of Wole Soyinka and considers his influence on literature, African thought, plus more.

Culture & Society

The Enduring Voice of Wole Soyinka

Wale LawalAugust 25, 2024

As he turns 90, Wole Soyinka discusses the current state of the world, the power of African literature, the social climate in Tinubu’s Nigeria, and the world ahead.

Culture & Society

What Wole Soyinka Means to Me

Sarah Ladipo ManyikaAugust 25, 2024

A native daughter reflects on the life and legacy of a literary giant.

Culture & Society

Soyinka in the Gazan Crypt

Richard SolomonAugust 25, 2024

Wole Soyinka’s work gives to Palestinians something the life-world of Palestinian letters give to us: an abiding love and solidarity for the captive.

International Affairs

The Dramatic Procedures of Wole Soyinka

Kamaldeen ArasiAugust 25, 2024

Wole Soyinka’s legacy as a dramatist is a testament to what a proper cultural education, clear ambition, and strict commitment to craft can produce.

Culture & Society

A Walk Through Wole Soyinka’s ‘Àbíkú’

Yomi Chibuikem FolaranmiAugust 25, 2024

An anthropological attempt at unravelling Wole Soyinka’s rewardingly obscure poem, ‘Àbíkú’.

Culture & Society

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Death and the King’s Horseman at the Stratford Festival

Moboluwajidide JosephAugust 18, 2024

The successes and challenges behind the production of one of Nigeria’s most iconic theatre works on a Western stage.

Culture & Society

The World After Wole Soyinka’s Climate of Fear

Ibrahim WilliamsAugust 25, 2024

First presented as Reith Lectures exactly 20 years ago, what does it mean to revisit Wole Soyinka’s Climate of Fear in today’s chaotic world?

Culture & Society

The Coming-of-Age Novel as a Portrait of Nigeria

Chinua Ezenwa-OhaetoAugust 18, 2024

The bildungsroman is the novel of Nigeria. No other kind of novel captures completely what it means to be Nigerian in the volatile, high-velocity, interconnected world of the twenty-first century.

Culture & Society

An African Feminist Reading of Wole Soyinka

Olabanke GoriolaAugust 25, 2024

Feminist scholars have often debated the portrayal of women in Wole Soyinka’s works, who typically navigate patriarchal societies.

Politics & Security

Remembering Kampala

Carey BarakaApril 6, 2024

For much of the sixties, Kampala was at the centre of literature in Africa, its status propelled by Makerere University and Rajat Neogy’s Transition Magazine.

History

Revisiting the Soyinka-Bọ́lẹ̀kájà Debate

Yinka AdetuAugust 25, 2024

Since the landmark Soyinka-Bọ́lẹ̀kájà debate of the 1980s, African poetry has sparked intense discussions about authenticity and the influence of Western literary traditions and forms on its poets.

Culture & Society

Négritude Since Wole Soyinka

Oluwaseun AdetunjiAugust 25, 2024

Despite Wole Soyinka’s engaging, critical views about Négritude, why has the movement remained relevant in shaping Africa’s history, philosophy and literature?

Culture & Society

The North African Novel in English: What Is It? How Is It?

Fayssal BensalahAugust 25, 2024

Arabophone and Francophone literatures have dominated the region of North Africa for decades, but now a third one is emerging—the Anglophone one.

International Affairs

Fiction as National Memory in the Age of Mass Protests

Hassan KassimAugust 18, 2024

Considering the 2024 Kenyan Gen Z protest, and the rising discontent among African youths, can literature play the role of lens in times of moral crisis, that too for a population that doesn’t read?

Culture & Society

‘Writing Comes From a Place of Danger and Struggle’

Patrice NganangJune 21, 2024

Cameroonian academic and author of Dog Days, Patrice Nganang, says social media has led to his transformation as a writer: ‘Social media led to my imprisonment, helped me free a few hundred people from jail, build schools and bridges, and feed incarcerated individuals. Simply put, it made me the writer I always dreamed of becoming.’

First Draft

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