Ogun's Children: The Literature and Politics of Wole Soyinka Since the Nobel

This collection of essays examines Soyinka’s post-Nobel works against the backdrop of his earlier works, especially the so-called "conservative and impossible plays of early Soyinka." The contributors are concerned with the political tenor and temperament of the post-Nobel years and the strong presence of the symbolism of Ogun, the creative energy of Soyinka’s Yoruba cosmology, during those years. These essays celebrate the achievements of Soyinka by acknowledging his Ogunian characters, which are often the vehicles and victims of a wayward political world.

The post-Nobel era also reveals a positive and consistent step toward the dictum, "justice is the first condition of humanity." Soyinka’s plays, From Zia with Love to Beatification of Area Boys, illustrate this intense quest for social and political justice in his home country, Nigeria. In his later works, there is a grand narrative about the Nigerian State, which the contributors privilege as they point out Soyinka’s ever-conscious attempt to reframe the dark hole of a very troubled collective world.

This volume of essays is distinct from all others because it is the first to make concrete the debate that exists between the pre-Nobel and post-Nobel works of Soyinka and the exchange of both streams of literary output within different periods of Nigerian society.