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Wole Soyinka

Wole Soyinka: the first African Nobel laureate in literature and the prison that shaped him Entertainment Wole Soyinka: the first African Nobel laureate in literature and the prison that shaped him In 1986 Wole Soyinka became the first African to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. Born in Abeokuta in 1934, he was jailed for nearly two years during the Nigerian Civil War, an experience he described in The Man Died.