Achebe or Soyinka: A Study in Contrasts
Kole Omotoso

About the Book

The purely literary achievements are always there for all to see, read and admire, and as time goes by, to treasure and to emulate. In the case of Achebe and Soyinka, the various prizes they have won attest to their achievements. Literary criticism has concentrated on Achebe's conscious writing on his culture for the consumption of foreigners as against writing for people within his own understanding… Soyinka, on his side, has been found by many critics as being deliberately difficult and hard to comprehend.

 

If we were to play a game of the world that Achebe creates side by side with the world that Soyinka creates we would be seeing two different worlds…

 

While the successes achieved by Achebe and Soyinka have had positive communal repercussions, their greatest successes have to do with their individual achievements in their ability to write one culture (Igbo and Yoruba) in the language of another culture (English). This is the nature of the greatest writers through time and today. Salman Rushdie, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Derek Walcott–these are the writers in whose company Chinua Achebe and Wole  Soyinka exist.

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