On Wole Soyinka

Throughout my lifetime, Wole Soyinka has been a towering voice in African literature and African affairs. Speaking to him in an interview, which is part of this issue, we were able to discuss our world today and his place in it.As such, it is only right that the interview starts this issue, but the interview is far from the only thing this issue set out to highlight.African literature is currently experiencing a plurality of debates: from whether nationality alone is what makes literature African to how to place literature from North Africa—is it African or Middle Eastern?To whether there is still hope forpan-Africanismand what the role of literature might be towards that end. What is clear is that reading Soyinka can help us understand some of these questions and perhaps even begin to answer them. After all, Soyinka has been engaged in some of these discussions for a very long time. His critiques of the historical Négritude movement come to mind, while ‘Climate of Fear’,his 2004 Reith Lecture, continues to resonate as our world grapples with multiple crises including those in Sudan, the Congo and Gaza. To understand how Soyinka’s works better prepare us to engage with our world, we invited a series of writers from across Africa and the African diaspora. These writers discussed not only Soyinka’s legacy but also ongoing developments in variousregions of the African literary world that complicate but also inspire new thinking about the meaning of African literature.