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The following appears in
Jonathan F. Vance, ed., Wole Soyinka (born 1934) Wole Soyinka, the Nigerian playwright, poet, novelist, and Nobel laureate (1986) was imprisoned for almost two years by the Nigerian military authorities in 1967 at the outbreak of the Nigerian Civil War for allegedly attempting to secure a fighter-bomber for the rebels. Although not a combatant and never formally charged or tried, Soyinka was seen as a dangerous provocateur by the military government that had seized power in 1966. Soyinka chronicles his imprisonment in two volumes: a book of poems, A Shuttle in the Crypt, written secretly while in prison, and a memoir, The Man Died, composed after his release in 1969 and but based on notes written in the margins of the few books he was permitted to have in prison. The Man Died is a mix of history, political analysis and personal testimony to the horrors of prison. Focused on the gross injustice of what he views as a questionable war carried on by a thoroughly corrupt and illegitimate regime, the most compelling and beautifully composed portions of the book relate how he slowly begins to lose his sanity during the 15 months he spent in solitary confinement: his tortured imagination and paranoia periodically overcoming his rational mind, it also unleashes a torrent of hallucinations and imagery that give artistic shape to the book. Soyinka was quietly released in 1969. He writes: "It was sad no longer to be considered a dangerous man." Through his subsequent writings (both creative and otherwise), speeches and political action, Soyinka has worked for political and social reform in a Nigeria ruled almost exclusively by the military. In 1995, having fled Nigeria a year earlier, he was sentenced to death in abstentia, a sentence since annulled. Wole Soyinka, A Shuttle in the Crypt (New York:
Hill and Wang, 1972). |