Nigerian, American Win Nobels : Soyinka Gets Literature, Buchanan Economics Prize

Wole Soyinka, a Nigerian novelist, poet and playwright who was jailed during the Biafra war, won the 1986 Nobel Prize in literature today and James McGill Buchanan of George Mason University in Virginia won the economics prize.

The Swedish Academy of Letters cited Buchanan, 67, for his theory that public economic policy is formulated according to the self-interest of politicians and governments.

The selection of Soyinka, 52, the first African to win the literature prize, continues the Swedish academy’s trend toward honoring writers who are not well-known in the West. He was cited as a writer “who in a wide cultural perspective and with poetic overtones fashions the drama of existence.”

Critic of Government

Soyinka told reporters in Paris today: “I hope this prize has not been awarded because I have been a vigorous critic of my government and others, Idi Amin’s (in Uganda), for example. I don’t want to think for a single moment it’s because of my political stand.”

He had arrived in Paris from New York to attend a meeting of the International Theater Institute, which he heads.

Soyinka, who writes in English, has published about 20 works, including more than a dozen plays and two novels. Many of his works deal with life in Nigeria and are satirical.

An outspoken government critic, he was arrested in 1967 on charges of conspiring with anti-government rebels fighting to establish an independent state called Biafra. He said he was tortured and held in solitary confinement during his 22-month imprisonment.

Soyinka has been prolific as a writer of drama, fiction, poetry, essays and criticism but is most famous as a dramatist.

He “has been characterized as one of the finest poetical playwrights that have written in English,” the academy said. It singled out two plays, “A Dance of the Forests” and “Death and the King’s Horseman.”

“A Dance of the Forests” is a half-satirical and half-fantastic celebration of Nigerian independence. “Death and the King’s Horseman” embodies his philosophy that the cultures of Africa and Europe need to cross-fertilize each other.

Earlier this year, Soyinka was involved in a controversy during the International Theater Institute’s Theater of Nations festival in Baltimore.

The Soviet Union protested as anti-Soviet the British production of George Orwell’s famous novel on totalitarianism, “Animal Farm.”

Soyinka bowed to Soviet wishes and excluded the play. He said his decision was consistent with the institute’s charter.

Soyinka was educated in Nigeria and Britain. After graduating from Leeds University with a degree in English in 1954, he worked as a teacher and scriptwriter at the Royal Court Theater in London.

He returned to Nigeria in 1960. He has taught at the universities of Ife and Ibadan and taught as a visiting professor at European universities and Yale.

Buchanan was honored for his contributions in a field called new political economy, or “public choice,” which embraces economics and political science.

He theorized that governments, like consumers, make economic decisions based on self-interest.

“He has transferred the concept of gain derived from mutual exchange between individuals to the realm of political decision-making,” the Swedish Academy of Sciences said in a statement.

A ‘Shock and Surprise’

Buchanan, who was contacted at home in Fairfax, Va., said the award was a “total shock and surprise” that will gain more public attention for his theory.

Economists who apply the “public choice” theory argue that the U.S. budget deficit was allowed to grow because politicians increased spending on projects that would enhance their chances of election, rather than cutting spending for the benefit of the public.

Buchanan, the grandson of a Tennessee governor, was educated at Middle Tennessee State College, the University of Tennessee and the University of Chicago, where he received his doctorate in 1948 in economics.