Biography of Soyinka:

Akinwande Oluwole ('wole) Soyinka was born to Yoruba parents- Samuel Ayodele, a teacher, and Grace Eniola Soyinka, a teacher, trader, and shopkeeper. On 13 July Isara , Western Nigeria, and grew up in the mearby cty of Abeokuta. He received his primary education at the local Christian mission school where his father was headmaster and his secondary schooling at the Abeokuta Grammar School and at Government College, Ibadan. Soon he went on to study world drama at the University of Leeds in Great Britain. Soyinka retured to Nigeria in 1960, the yearof independence and immediately launched himself into the dramatic, cultural, and political life of the new nation. The period of 1960-1967 was marked by frantic and rodigious production. Soyinka published seven plays, a novel, and a volume of poems, coedited magazines, broadcast radio plays, and conducted research into ritual dramaturgy and folk.
A precocious, intellectually omnivorous child, Soyinka sated his hunger for knowledge at his home, which he describes in the book "the intellectual water-hole of Ake and its environs".
After studying Greek, English, and history at the University fo Ibadan in Nigeria fron 1952 to 1954, Soyinka traveled to England to attend the University of Leeds.  There he was a member of the schools Theatre Group and earned his bachelor's degrees with honors in 1957.