‘Of Africa,’ by Wole Soyinka - NYTimes.com
Among the Africans who deserve some kind of secular sainthood is Wole Soyinka. Although best known as a playwright, he has also written poetry, novels and nonfiction; the luminous world evoked in his memoir “Aké: The Years of Childhood” sticks with me decades after I read it. Moreover, Soyinka has always been a passionate defender of human rights. For trying to negotiate peace during the Nigerian civil war of the late 1960s, he spent two years in prison, much of it in solitary confinement; some 30 years later, as an opponent of a later generation of military dictatorship, he had to escape Nigeria on a motorcycle and was sentenced to death in absentia.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/04/books/review/of-africa-by-wole-soyinka.html?_r=0&adxnnl=1&partner=rss&emc=rss&adxnnlx=1352400807-8+fCDF3qb5WxtisqK2lQAQ
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