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On Monday September 2008 when German journalist, author and activist was presenting his first book/travelogue about African Nobel Prize winner Wole Soyinka in Ibadan, he was steered again to the supposed rivalry between pioneer African novelist Chinua Achebe and Africa's first Noble literature prize winner, Wole Soyinka.
Responding to a question by publisher Bankole Olayebi about the preception of Wole Soyinka outside Nigeria's shores as compared to his perception within Nigeria, Gerd could not help but cast aspersions on the critics within and outside Nigeria who fanatically write down Wole Soyinka's works and its relevance either because of ignorace of his person and motivation, or because of other unfathomnable reasons. Meuer, while explaining his own perception of the 1986 Nobel Prize winner, said that his book did actually present a middle point perspective for all those who occupy extreme positions with regards to perception of Wole Soyinka, among other things.
To Meuer a confessed disciple of Wole Soyinka, and a friend of his since his student days in 1962, the honour bestowed on the Nigerian in 1986 was - to use his words – “not really a result of we (Europeans) having being bamboozled by his ‘big English’" as many people have said disparagingly in discrediting the selection. One only had to consider the creative works: drama, prose, film, poetry and even the political activism of the man – Soyinka - to see that he was most eminently deserving of the prize then in 1986 as he is now. Meuer said. To him, it is for those people for whom the author Wole Soyinka is not really understood in the context of his personality and challenges that Chinua Achebe might have held such fanatically domineering awe that transcends reasoning and objectivity while seeking to obliterate the brilliance and greatness of Kongi, as WS is affectionately called, and his contribution to African literature.
On the first week in October this year, The Nobel Academy in Sweden will announce this year’s winner of the prestigious Nobel Prize for Literature. Indeed, for all it’s worth, and even more for the brilliance and resilience in the creative life of pioneer African novelist, author of the famous Things Fall Apart, the Nobel, if presented to Chinua Achebe this year would surely not have gone to a more deserving personality.
Gerd Meuer's book is titled Journeys Around and with Kongi: Half a Century on the Road with Wole Soyinka, and presented by the Goethe-Institut
