Professor. Wole Soyinka

Soyinka, at Festival letteratura in Mantua, Sept., 7th, 2019, Teatro Bibiena.

Here's a time line of Professor. Wole Soyinka:

• 1934 Born in Abeouka.

• 1940 Attented St. Peter's Primary School in Abeokuta.

• 1946 Accepted by Government College in Ibadan.

• 1954 Finished his course at Government College.

• 1954 Soyinka began work on "Keffi's Birthday Treat", a short radio play for Nigerian Broadcasting Service that was broadcast.

• 1954 Soyinka later relocated to England.

• 1957 The Invention was the first of his works to be produced at the Royal Court Theatre.

• 1959 Soyinka received a Rockefeller Research Fellowship from University College in Ibadan, his alma mater, for research on African theatre, and he returned to Nigeria.

• 1959 Soyinka replaced Jahnheinz Jahn to become coeditor for the literary periodical.

• 1960 He produced his new satire, The Trials of Brother Jero.

• 1960 It premiered in Lagos as Nigeria celebrated its sovereignty.

• 1960 Soyinka wrote the first full-length play produced on Nigerian television.

• 1962 Soyinka's essay "Towards a True Theater" was published.

• 1963 His first feature-length movie, Culture in Transition, was released.

• 1964 He Interpreters, "a complex but also vividly documentary novel", was published in London.

• 1964 Resigned his university post, as a protest against imposed pro-government behaviour by the authorities.

• 1965 He was arrested for the first time, charged with holding up a radio station at gunpoint (as described in his 2006 memoir You Must Set Forth at Dawn) and replacing the tape of a recorded speech by the premier of Western Nigeria with a different tape containing accusations of election malpractice.

• 1965 Soyinka was released after a few months of confinement, as a result of protests by the international community of writers.

• 1965 Same year he wrote two more dramatic pieces: Before the Blackout and the comedy Kongi’s Harvest.

• 1965 He also wrote The Detainee, a radio play for the BBC in London.

• 1966 His play Kongi’s Harvest was produced in revival at the World Festival of Negro Arts in Dakar, Senegal.

• 1966 Becoming chief of the Cathedral of Drama at the University of Ibadan, Soyinka became more politically active.

• 1967 Try to avert civil war.

• 1967 He was imprisoned for 22 months as civil war ensued between the Federal Government of Nigeria and the Biafrans.

• 1967 Despite his imprisonment, The Lion and The Jewel, was produced in Accra.

• 1968 The Negro Ensemble Company in New York produced Kongi’s Harvest.While still imprisoned.

• 1969 when the civil war came to an end, amnesty was proclaimed, and Soyinka and other political prisoners were freed.

• 1970 He produced the play Kongi's Harvest, while simultaneously adapting it as a film of the same title.

• 1970 When the civil war came to an end, amnesty was proclaimed, and Soyinka and other political prisoners were freed.

• 1970 He finished another play, called Madmen and Specialists.

• 1971 His poetry collection A Shuttle in the Crypt was published.

• 1971 Concerned about the political situation in Nigeria.

• 1974 His Collected Plays, Volume II was issued by Oxford University Press.

• 1976 He published his poetry collection Ogun Abibiman, as well as a collection of essays entitled Myth, Literature and the African World.

• 1986 Soyinka was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986, becoming the first African laureate.

• 1986 He received the Agip Prize for Literature.

• 1990 A third novel, inspired by his father's intellectual circle, Isara: A Voyage Around Essay, appeared.

• 1993 Soyinka was awarded an honorary doctorate from Harvard University.

• 2007 Soyinka called for the cancellation of the Nigerian presidential elections held two weeks earlier, beset by widespread fraud and violence.

• 2014 Soyinka delivered a recording of his speech "From Chibok with Love" to the World Humanist Congress in Oxford, hosted by the International Humanist and Ethical Union and the British Humanist Association.

• 2014 He was awarded the 2014 International Humanist Award.

Oluwole Babatunde Soyinka, known as Wole Soyinka, is a Nigerian playwright, poet and essayist. He was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature, the first African to be honoured in that category. Soyinka was born into a Yoruba family in Abeokuta.

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