Born in Nigeria in 1934, Professor Wole Soyinka is a novelist, playwright, poet, essayist and human rights advocate. He was Africa's first Nobel Prize winner, being honoured for his autobiographical novel Ake two years after its publication in 1984. It was described as 'a modern classic.'

Ake spans the early years of Soyinka's childhood in a Nigerian town where his father was a respected head-master in the boarding school where the family lived during the dying days of British colonial rule. It is a moving and often amusing description of a family's life straddling traditional Yoruba customs and a Christian lifestyle. It launched African literature on the world.

From an early age, Soyinka was a prolific writer and a political activist. He moved to Leeds in the UK to study for a doctorate, and subsequently joined London's Royal Court Theatre at the height of its mould-breaking successes with young playwrights including Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter (a 2006 Nobel prize winner). His 1959 play, The Lion and the Jewel was performed there and revived recently during the theatre's 50th-anniversary celebrations. He returned home during the Nigerian Civil War, and in 1967 was imprisoned for almost two years for his involvement with the Biafran cause. Subsequently he founded and wrote for several national theatre groups, and has been visiting Professor at Sheffield and Cambridge Universities and Yale. He has written seven novels, 10 plays and several collections of essays and poetry. He remains an active and important human rights advocate.