Wole Soyinka, Nobel Prize Winner: Sweden Acknowledges Africa

Abstract

Repeatedly, in the interviews and speeches he was giving during the hectic month of December 1986, Wole Soyinka stressed the representativeness that he insisted was contingent to his nomination as Nobel Prize winner of literature. accept this prize because I have taken the attitude that it is recognition of a neglected area of the world, he declared (Bentsi-Enchil 2637). This premise seems to have been fully recognized by the Swedish readership. In simplistic terms, they viewed Africa as the winner of the first prize, African literature of the second, and Soyinka of the third. There is no other way of interpreting the unreserved unanimity with which the nomination was received. The absence of the usual rounds of vituperation, concerning either the money-giving institution itself or allegations of partiality on the part of the Committee, underlines the concurrence of opinion. So the assumption that the Prize may have been assigned for reasons other than aesthetic ones did not become an issue at all, because the academicians' choice was uncontroversial, consonant with readers' expectations, and understood, quite correctly, as a political decision. Indeed, the Swedish Academy of Letters only had to ratify an agreement that had long been in operation. On the other hand, the Academy's motivation for the Prize did not tally with the preferences of the Swedish readership, as is proved by the critical history of Soyinka's reputation.