Born Akinwande Oluwole Babatunde Soyinka, Wole Soyinka is a Nigerian playwright, poet, and literary. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1986 and has authored dozens of plays, novels, short stories, essays, and poetry collections.
Soyinka was born on July 1934 in the city of Abeokuta in Nigeria. His father was a minister, and his mother owned a shop and was a political activist in the women's movement. Even though his parents were both Anglicans, their family was steeped in indigenous Yoruba spirituality and spiritual traditions. This spiritual background would go on to influence several of Soyinka's works, including A Dance of the Forests.
After completing his primary...