I DID NOT WIN NOBEL PRIZE BECAUSE OF DEATH AND THE KING'S HORSEMAN.

   Perhaps you don't know, in order for a writer to be awarded the coveted,ultra-competitive Nobel Prize for Literature, apart from his or her volume of literary works, the writer must write a phenomenally successful literary work that must tickle the Nobel Committee enough that such a writer is qualified to be inducted into the Nobel Hall of Fame. Ernest Hemmingway won the prize for The Old Man and the Sea, Gabriel Garcia Marques won it for 100 Years of Solitude, Toni Morrison reportedly clinched it with her literary masterpiece, Beloved, a novel which sold well over 60 million copies. The big question in literary and academic circles is, which of Soyinka's works made him to win the prize in 1986. Majority have said that he won the prize for Death and the King's Horseman.
   On a chance meeting him the Nobel laureate at a book fair in Lagos recently, I asked him the knotty question. Hear him: ''It is not true that I was awarded the Nobel Prize because of Death and the King's Horseman. The Nobel Committee was silent on which of my literary works actually clinched it for me. However, in the citation, A Dance of the Forests, The Man Died and Ake were mentioned sparingly. People often said that I won it for Death.....because of the huge popularity of the play. You can't really unravel the workings of the minds of the Nobel Committee.'''