Wole Soyinka

Longform Profiles on Wole Soyinka and curator Chude Jideonwo, a feature on South African poetry, an essay on an Oscar-winning film, interviews with indie filmmakers, and more: the defining stories of our fifth year.

Since the 1950s, the Nobel laureate has worked in rebellion, carving out a complex, fecund torque of an oeuvre. But as his plays of mythic vigor and Yoruba impulse revitalized Anglophone theatre, raising an art form to ritualistic heights, his force of personality kept him in the political arena, a close witness of an African affliction. Few artists have lived like him. Yet at 91, carrying the mantle of “greatest living writer,” he has one more great battle on his hands — with generations who once deified him.

He inherited the drama of the gods and became the greatest living writer. But at 91, in the long rage of Nigerian nationhood, his deep political legacy is at a crossroads.

“Only one universal ideology answers human cruelties, the excesses of power, bigotries, social inequalities and alienation: Literature,” wrote Africa’s first Nobel laureate in literature, who turned 87 this week.