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"Unquestionably Africa's most versatile writer and arguably one of her finest" (New York Times Book Review) A Play of Giants is a savage satire on some of the best-known dictators of our time (including Idi Amin); it brings together a group of dictatorial African leaders at bay in an embassy in New York attempting to make decisions together. Its theatrical predecessors include: Genet's The Balcony and Brecht's Arturo Ui.From Zia with Love and A Scourge of Hyacinths; When the Military decrees that a crime carrying a prison sentence now retroactively warrants summary execution, confusion and fear permeate a society where the brutality and injustice of military rule is parodied by life inside prison - based on events in Nigeria in the early 1980s Wole Soyinka's stage play From Zia with Love and radio play A Scourge of Hyacinths, were produced in the early 90s. ... Read more

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A wholly fresh interpretation of the timeless play by a Nobel Prize-winning author.

Wole Soyinka has translated—in both language and spirit—a great classic of ancient Greek theater. He does so with a poet's ear for the cadences and rhythms of chorus and solo verse as well as a commanding dramatic use of the central social and religious myth. In his hands The Bacchae becomes a communal feast, a tumultuous celebration of life, and a robust ritual of the human and social psyche. "The Bacchae is the rites of an extravagant banquet, a monstrous feast," Soyinka writes. "Man reaffirms his indebtedness to earth, dedicates himself to the demands of continuity, and invokes the energies of productivity. Reabsorbed within the communal psyche he provokes the resources of nature; in turn he is replenished for the cyclic rain in his fragile individual potency." The blending of two master playwrights—Euripides and Soyinka—makes for an unforgettable experience. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Very Different than Euripides's play
Actually this play by Soyinka is ENTIRELY an adaptation, and contains very little (if any) of the original ancient text.He says in the preface that he borrowed from other translations to make his adaptation.So the below reviewer is mistaken when he says that it is "a pretty faithful adaptation of it".I have studied The Bacchae for years, in the original ancient Greek and in over 8 translations of it, and can say without any hesitation that this is a completely DIFFERENT play than Euripides'.The only things that remain the same are the characters and the flavour of the structure of the original.

It is a beautiful "adaptation" nevertheless, but really, nothing can compare to Euripides's!

Soyinka's Translation Brings Diversity to the Ancient
Soyinka's translation of Sophocles' ancient work brings new life to the piece so many have already read. His version of the poem incorporates his opinions--as shaped while growing up in Africa--into the ancient work, and the translation brings a fresh take on the play. I advise it to be read alongside a "traditional" reading of the play if in a classroom setting, so that the ancient ideas are still upheld, while fresh ones are incorporated. A lovely work.

Feast!
As a conscript to the universal workings of myth as means to replenish the psychic and physical energies of the social group- Wole Soyinka's Bacchae was a satisfying read. This man of universal letters revised Euripides' drama only in so far as he infused it with his tribal, i.e. Yoruban flavor for the congruent deity of Orgun. The Dionysian trail throughout history haunted Solyinka as it has audiences and adherents. The playwright is not alone in ascribing the immortality of the piece to a universal need to purge the soul and soil with blood and excess. (Some say cannibalism. others, communion.)If not cyclically honored, if not worshipped and given this praise, the God will avenge mankind in horror and misery.Jung, after all, believed that Nazism was Orgun's revenge. The Bacchae and other rituals of excess, blood sacrifices andorphic trance are reenacted in every culture and as May Day, have become vastly diluted to the point of being hardly recognizable.Without the order of the religious, the encoded structure, the excess is uncontained and works against the social good. (60's idealists to Weathermen, deaths, etc.)
When it was first written, it reflected a socio-economic condition in Greece. Many of the towns had imported slave labor and left the lower classes without income. Further, the cheap labor allowed for expansion of the mercantile and industrial centers so that these people's lands were being lost. Then as in the rest of its rebirths, the cult of Dionysius came to lifeduring economic displacement and forced migrations. In other words the return to the earth and the mad episodes of discontrol provided massive antidotes and a new source of power to the earthly loss of the same.As this has been a retrograde force througout history and touches the human need to rejoin the natural forces and cycles, to sacrifice and re-enact the drama of the 'scapegoat' the force of the drama collapses time and culture. Themes are rewoven throughout the continents and the social rituals. May Day is one, as are Mardi Gras and the other 'secret' and excessive- bloody- banquets that serve some unique human and social function- a blood letting, and a rebellion against the enforced 'mysteries' or 'laws' from the state system.
A brilliant playwright and literary lion. The play is a tour de force and will touch the repressed or forgotten in all of us.

a communion rite
I read Euripides' original The Bakkhai, and I found Soyinka's version to be a pretty faithful adaptation of it.Soyinka's Bacchae was written as an African-influence stage play, and though I never saw it performed I think it would work wonderfully.I would recommend this play for anyone interested in either the Classics, or just Greek/Roman tragedies in general. ... Read more

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Biodun Jeyifo examines the relationship between the innovative and influential writings of Wole Soyinka and his radical political activism. Jeyifo analyzes Soyinka's most ambitious works, relating them to the controversies generated by his appropriation of literature and theater for radical political objectives. The evaluations of this study are presented in the context of Soyinka's sustained engagement with the collective experience of violence in post-independence, post-colonial Africa. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Harrowing
This is the story of Soyinka's 27 month period of imprisonment at the hands of the Nigerian government. Unlike, say, Nelson Mandela's autobiography, which generally casts a similar subject in its wider political and social contexts, this is fundamentally a personal account, painfully private at times. Essentially, Soyinka found refuge from the brutality inflicted upon him by retreating into and living within his own mind. At times he drifted about the frontiers of madness, hanging on to his self by a thread. At others he pondered, listened, watched, like only the truly otherwise unoccupied can. And, importantly, he also managed to scrounge paper and a pencil from time to time and record his journey of motionlessness. For those interested in the human mind, this is a rewarding book, and I highly recommend it. ... Read more

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This collection of the most significant and illuminating critical essays about the works of Wole Soyinka over the past three decades is evidence of the international esteem he has achieved. This Nobel Prize winner from Nigeria is arguably Africa's greatest living writer.His novels and plays are appreciated throughout the world.His works have attracted the attention of such acclaimed authors and critics as Wilson Harris, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Kwame Anthony Appiah, as well as such leading academicians as Philip Brockbank, Joachim Fieback, Abiola Irele, Femi Osofisan, and Niyi Osundare.

Gathered here in this remarkable collection, the essays simultaneously showcase Soyinka's postcolonial politics and his literary aestheticism.They reveal the irony that the downtrodden peoples whom Soyinka champions are those who cannot read his stirring books or see his compelling dramas. Biodun Jeyifo was Soyinka's student, junior colleague, and even, Jeyifo says, his "adversary in the ferocious intramural ideological debates within the community of African leftist writers, critics, and academics in the seventies and eighties."

"This book," Jeyifo writes in his introduction, "is the product of [an] extensive review of the scholarly aspects of the reception of Soyinka in the last three decades of his career as one of the most influential of writers of Africa."

This volume will afford Soyinka's readers a heightened sense of the wit, humor, and eloquence of this leading writer-activist of Africa and the English-speaking world. ... Read more

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Includes sections on Wole Soyinka's autobiographical work Ake, some of his plays, some collections of poetry and of two of his novels. North America: Heinemann ... Read more

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Adewale Maja-Pearce analyzes contemporary African politics and society with absolute candor in these essays. ... Read more