Chinua Achebe was a novelist. Wole Soyinka is a playwright.
I know most of you didn’t know this, but there is really no basis for comparison between the two. It’s like comparing Sunny Ade and Oliver De Coque because they are both singers.
Chinua Achebe also deserved the Nobel Prize no doubt, but he never won it. Wole Soyinka won it in 1986. That award has been in existence since 1901. If the award committee wanted to give it to Chinua Achebe, they would have given him the prize long before Soyinka won it in 1986. Achebe died in 2013 – 27 solid years after Soyinka won the prize. The committee still didn’t give him the award; and you are here saying Soyinka “stole” the award that Achebe should have received.
Chinua Achebe himself never lamented not receiving the prize because, believe it or not, the Nobel Prize, or any award for that matter, is not the true measure of achievement for a writer. No African novel has sold more copies and has been translated into as many languages as “Things Fall Apart”.
To measure Achebe’s accomplishments by whether he won the Nobel Prize or not belittles his work and insults his memory.
Incidentally, this same Wole Soyinka wrote in 2013: “This conduct is gross disservice to Chinua Achebe and disrespectful of the life-engrossing occupation known as literature. How did creative valuation descend to such banality? Do these people know what they’re doing – they are inscribing Chinua’s epitaph in the negative mode of thwarted expectations. I find that disgusting. Was it the Nobel that spurred a young writer, stung by Eurocentric portrayal of African reality, to put pen to paper and produce Things Fall Apart?”
You lot should leave literature alone for those of us who know its true worth, please. You all don’t read anyway. Why the sudden interest in who was a better writer as if you have bought or read any of their books?
Drag prof if you want to drag him, just leave Chinua Achebe’s name out of such frivolous comments, and let the dead continue to rest in peace!
Just Me… THINKING OUT LOUD!
~ Olaitan Adesina
