By Ayoade Davidson Ojeniyi
Happy 90th birthday in advance, WS !!!! BORN 13th July, 1934
WS is an Ijegba man: mum = Egba, dad = Ijebu Isara Remo !!! He transferred from University College Ibadan(now UI) to Leeds to complete his first degree!!!
Prof Wole Soyinka has no PhD. or Masters degree because most of the would-be assessors used his works for their own Theses. Those who did not use his works declined to assess him because he once critiqued the works of one of them, and the professor accepted his criticism and immediately made corrections. So, nobody could assess him. He had 2:1 in Leeds and became a Prof from it. The first African to win Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986. WS wore Ofi Dansiki to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature.
By the way, we should not blame Baba OBJ in his age mix-up. Baba said that one day, he closed his eyes and used his pen to choose his present birthday date. Therefore, based on the age of WS, Baba OBJ actual age should be about 92. Both of them can do everything by themselves. They can climb upstairs. They can run lightly. Baba plays Squash by 7 am. daily. They still study and still write. Baba writes dangerous letters sometimes. Both are “bitter” friends. Baba survived diabetic while WS survived prostrate cancer. WS birthday is authentic because his parents were educated, and they collected his birth certificate now framed by Government College Ibadan.
Bobaseye Akinyemi Olusegun Fasakin wrote:
Works of SW, let someone also post Achebe works
👇👇
Plays:
Keffi’s Birthday Treat (1954)
The Invention (1957)
The Swamp Dwellers (1958)
A Quality of Violence (1959)
The Lion and the Jewel (1959)
The Trials of Brother Jero (1960)
A Dance of the Forests (1960)
My Father’s Burden (1960)
The Strong Breed (1964)
Before the Blackout (1964)
Kongi’s Harvest (1964)
The Road (1965)
Madmen and Specialists (1970)
The Bacchae of Euripides (1973)
Camwood on the Leaves (1973)
Jero’s Metamorphosis (1973)
Death and the King’s Horseman (1975)
Opera Wonyosi (1977)
Requiem for a Futurologist (1983)
A Play of Giants (1984)
Childe Internationale (1987)
From Zia with Love (1992)
The Detainee (radio play)
A Scourge of Hyacinths (radio play)
The Beatification of Area Boy (1996)
Document of Identity (radio play, 1999)
King Baabu (2001)
Etiki Revu Wetin
Alapata Apata (2011)
“Thus Spake Orunmila” (in Sixty-Six Books (2011)
Novels :
The Interpreters (1965)
Season of Anomy (1973)
Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth (Bookcraft, Nigeria; Bloomsbury, UK; Pantheon, US, 2021)
Short stories:
A Tale of Two (1958)
Egbe’s Sworn Enemy (1960)
Madame Etienne’s Establishment (1960)
Memoirs :
The Man Died: Prison Notes (1972)
Aké: The Years of Childhood (1981)
Ibadan: The Penkelemes Years: a memoir 1945–1965 (1989)
Ìsarà: A Voyage around Essay (1989)
You Must Set Forth at Dawn (2006)
Poetry collections:
Telephone Conversation (1963) (appeared in Modern Poetry in Africa)
Idanre and other poems (1967)
A Big Airplane Crashed into The Earth (original title Poems from Prison) (1969)
A Shuttle in the Crypt (1971)
Ogun Abibiman (1976)
Mandela’s Earth and other poems (1988)
Early Poems (1997)
Samarkand and Other Markets I Have Known (2002)
Essays :
“Towards a True Theater” (1962)
Culture in Transition (1963)
Neo-Tarzanism: The Poetics of Pseudo-Transition
A Voice That Would Not Be Silenced
Art, Dialogue, and Outrage: Essays on Literature and Culture (1988)
From Drama and the African World View (1976)
Myth, Literature, and the African World (1976)
The Blackman and the Veil (1990)
The Credo of Being and Nothingness (1991)
The Burden of Memory – The Muse of Forgiveness (1999)
A Climate of Fear (the BBC Reith Lectures 2004, audio and transcripts)
New Imperialism (2009)
Of Africa (2012)
Beyond Aesthetics: Use, Abuse, and Dissonance in African Art Traditions (2019)
Films :
Kongi’s Harvest
Culture in Transition
Blues for a Prodigal
Translations :
The Forest of a Thousand Daemons: A Hunter’s Saga (1968; a translation of D. O. Fagunwa’s Ògbójú Ọdẹ nínú Igbó Irúnmalẹ̀)
In the Forest of Olodumare (2010; a translation of D. O. Fagunwa’s Igbo Olodumare)