Wole Soyinka

Soyinkan lapsuudenmuistot ovat ilmiömäisen tarkkoja, joskus leikittelevän hirteisiä, väliin liikuttavia, mutta useimmiten valloittavan hilpeitä. Mukana on aikuinen kirjailija punnitsemassa arvoja, kaipaamassa menetettyä alkuperäisyyttä, kertomassa muutoksen draamasta, joka ottaa voimansa kansannoususta ja rakentuu loppua kohti kuin fuuga enteillen Nigerian itsenäistymistä. Aké - lapsuusvuodet on syventävä elämysmatka afrikkalaisuuteen. Samalla se on verraton johdanto Wole Soyinkan koko tuotantoon. Lukija pääsee sukeltamaan afrikkalaiseen lapsuuteen ja kuulemaan, kun tämä terävä ja mestarillinen kertoja puhuu. Näytelmäkirjailija, runoilija, romaanikirjailija, poleeminen esseisti ja nyt omaelämäkertakirjailija Soyinka on eräs Afrikan monipuolisimmista kirjailijoista. Akéssa hän on luonut lapsuudestaan Länsi-Nigeriassa hersyvän, herkän ja moniulotteisen kuvauksen, joka upottaa lukijansa pienen Wolen, tämän uteliaan, mietiskelevän ja seikkailevan lapsen maailmaan.

This collection includes the work of both established and new poets from the four corners of Africa. The majority of poems were originally written in English but there are translations from Swahili, Yoruba, Portugese and French.

Elesin Oba, the King's Horseman, has a single destiny. When the King dies, he must commit ritual suicide and lead his King's favourite horse and dog through the passage to the world of the ancestors. A British Colonial Officer, Pilkings, intervenes to prevent the death and arrests Elesin. The play is a set text for NEAB GCSE, NEAB A Level and NEAB A/S Level. 'A masterpiece of 20th century drama' - Guardian "A transfixing work of modern world drama" (Independent); "clearly a masterpiece. . . he achieves the full impact of Greek tragedy" (Irving Wardle, Independent on Sunday); "the action of the play is as inevitable and eloquent as in Antigone: a clash of values and cultures so fundamental that tragedy issues: a tragedy for each individual, each tribe" (Michael Schmidt, Daily Telegraph)

`The Lion and the Jewel alone is enough to establish Nigeria as the most fertile new source of English-speaking drama since Synge's discovery of the Western Isles.' The Times The ironic development and consequences of `progress' may be traced through both the themes and the tone of the works included in this second volume of Wole Soyinka's plays. The Lion and the Jewel shows an ineffectual assault on past tradition soundly defeated. In Kongi's Harvest, however, the pretensions of Kongi's regime are also fatal. The denouement points the way forward. The two Brother Jero plays pursue that way, the comic `propheteering' of the earlier play giving way to the sardonic reality of Jero's Metamorphosis. Madmen and Specialists, Soyinka's most pessimistic play, concerns the physical, mental, and moral destruction of modern civil war.

This is one of the best-known plays by Africa's major dramatist, Wole Soyinka. It is set in the Yoruba village of Ilunjinle. The main characters are Sidi (the Jewel), 'a true village belle' and Baroka (the Lion), the crafty and powerful Bale of the village, Lakunle, the young teacher, influenced by western ways, and Sadiku, the eldest of Baroka's wives. How the Lion hunts the Jewel is the theme of this ribald comedy.

The Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka has been hailed as `one of the finest poetic playwrights who have ever written in English' (Martin Esslin) and `a writer of genius' (Irish Times). The five plays in this collection are linked by their concern with the spiritual and the social, with belief and ritual as integrating forces for social cohesion. A Dance of the Forests (1960), a confrontation between the living and the dead, between history and reality; The Swamp Dwellers (1961), a tale of perilous dependence on the favour of the gods; The Strong Breed (1963), a play of expiation, all take place in Africa. So also does The Road (1965), `a rich and beautiful tragedy' (Times Literary Supplement) The most recent work, an adaptation of The Bacchae of Euripides (1973), remains set in and around the Thebes of ancient Greece, but draws deeply on Africa and the themes of the earlier plays in this book. In all these plays - whether concerned with the corruption of urban life or the power of superstition - Soyinka's language and imagination transcend the plays' immediate social contexts.