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Clip description
Soyinka tells Andrea Stretton that, for him, society’s biggest traitors are those who abuse language: tyrants like Hitler that use their great oratorical and persuasive skills to mock human progress.
Curator’s notes
This is a very moving interview between the great African Nobel laureate and the arts journalist and presenter Andrea Stretton. Wole Soyinka explains that even during his darkest times in jail, where he was kept in solitary confinement, he found a way to be creative. He wrote his book Madmen and Specialists (1970) on any scraps of paper that came his way. This bleak work appeared soon after his release. These days he tries to be more positive, because he wants to reflect the fact that so much of humanity simply refuses to lie down and die before the tyrants who rule them.
He is often criticised for being 'too Western’ but describes these critics as 'neo-Tarzanists’ who want Africans to return to wearing grass skirts and beating the tom-tom drum. He tries to offer moral ambiguity rather than certainty in his work, and writes with a love of satire.
