In mid-Feb, NYU Abu Dhabi hosted Wole Soyinka, who in 1986 became the first black African writer to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature. The Nigerian playwright, poet, essayist and political activist has drawn acclaim for an expansive oeuvre that, “in a wide cultural perspective and with poetic overtones, fashions the drama of existence.”

Born on July 13, 1934, in Abeokuta, Nigeria, to a Yoruba family, Soyinka pursued his education at the Government College and University College in Ibadan before moving to the University of Leeds in England to graduate with a degree in English. After founding his acting company — The 1960 Masks — in 1958, Soyinka became implicated in the struggle for Nigerian independence.

The 1960 premiere of his play “A Dance of the Forests” coincided with the year of Nigeria’s declaration of independence, a work that distinguished itself from other “anodyne celebrations of nationhood . . . [by bringing] ancestors to life to comment shrewdly on both past and present. In many ways, that complex though (literally) fantastic play may be seen as a source for much of his later work” in that “Soyinka’s main weapon was satire.” In other words, “the play satirizes the fledgling nation by stripping it of romantic legend and by showing that the present is no more a golden age than was the past.”

This debut gave way to the production of an immense literary corpus of plays, novels and literary journal articles, in addition to a lifetime punctured by spells of upheaval. At times, his activism has yielded dramatic consequences; these include his imprisonment in 1967-1979 in response to his opposition to the escalation of the Nigerian Civil War in Biafra, and his escape from Nigeria in 1994 on a 12-hour motorbike ride after voicing support for the application of international sanctions against General Sani Abacha’s military government.

Soyinka drew on this rich intellectual and political legacy when engaging in a dialogue with the NYUAD community at two principal events: a discussion with students from the Africa Global Student Interest Group on Feb. 17, and a public conversation on the following day between Soyinka and Tishani Doshi, Visiting Assistant Professor of Practice, Literature, and Creative Writing.

Under the direction of the SIG’s president, Ribka Tewelde, Class of 2023, Africa Global also organized a screening of “Négritude: A Dialogue Between Wole Soyinka and Senghor”, a film that broaches the disagreements and commonalities between the perspectives of Soyinka and one of the founding fathers of the Négritude movement, the Senegalese writer Léopold Senghor.

The intellectual currents of négritude, Afro-Pessimism and Afro-Renaissance dominated the various dialogues Soyinka undertook with the NYUAD community. Other recurrent themes were those of dispossession, absurdity and the role dramatists have to play in shedding a light — in the words of Soyinka, “lifting a corner” — on the injustices they witness.