"Playwright, poet, novelist, polemical essayist and now autobiographer, Mr. Soyinka is unquestionably Africa's most versatile writer and arguably her finest. In ''Ake'' he has produced an account of his childhood as a Yoruba in western Nigeria that is destined to become a classic of African autobiography, indeed a classic of childhood memoirs wherever and whenever produced....Through recollection, restoration and re-creation, he conveys a personal vision that was formed by the childhood world that he now returns to evoke and exalt in his autobiography. This is the ideal circle of autobiography at its best. It is what makes ''Ake,'' in addition to its other great virtues, the best available introduction to the work of one of the liveliest, most exciting writers in the world today."〔James Olney, ("The Spirits and the African Boy" ), ''The New York Times'', 10 October 1982.〕