Wole Soyinka, the 1986 Nobel Prize winner, at his 70th birthday party, which is hosted by Du Bois Institute director Henry Louis Gates Jr. Soyinka's unceasing battle for human rights has led to nearly a dozen arrests and a death sentence. (Staff photo Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard News Office)

When Wole Soyinka, the first African writer to win the Nobel Prize in literature, turned 70, his native country of Nigeria celebrated his birthday with two solid weeks of festivities. Harvard could not fête the 1986 Nobel Prize winner in quite the same way, but it managed something equally impressive - a feast of words catered by three of the honoree's fellow Nobel laureates.

"A Season of Laureates: Readings in Honor of the 70th Birthday of Wole Soyinka," sponsored jointly by the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research and the Kennedy School of Government's Institute of Politics, took place April 27. The Nobel Prize winners who lent their voices to the affair were Nadine Gordimer (1991), Derek Walcott (1992), and Toni Morrison (1993). Du Bois Institute director Henry Louis Gates Jr. hosted the event

Soyinka, who is currently the Alphonse Fletcher Fellow at the Du Bois Institute, is a playwright, poet, novelist, and essayist, as well as a political activist who has been called "the conscience of Nigeria." During Nigeria's civil war, Soyinka appealed in an article for a cease-fire between the opposition groups and the government. As a result, he was arrested in 1967, accused of conspiring with the Biafra rebels, and held as a political prisoner for 22 months. He has been arrested nine times since then and at one time was tried in absentia and sentenced to death.

The selections that the Nobel laureates chose to read were as varied as they were mesmerizing. Gordimer read a short story, told in the voice of a young African girl, about a group of refugees who travel across a game reserve to escape the civil war in their country. Walcott read a section of a play based on Homer's "Odyssey" that portrays Odysseus' adversary, the Cyclops, as a Big Brother-like dictator. Morrison read a section of her latest novel, "Love" (2003), in which an elderly woman reminisces about her life at a seaside resort.

Among the guests at Wole Soyinka's 70th birthday party are fellow Nobel Prize-winners in literature (from left) Nadine Gordimer, Derek Walcott, and Toni Morrrison. Soyinka is on the far right. (Staff photo Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard News Office)

Soyinka read a passage from an unpublished autobiographical work dealing with his experiences as a playwright and director. Titled "A Digression on the Purpose of Accidents," the passage humorously discussed Soyinka's exasperation with Westerners who reject good fortune when it does not conform to preconceived notions and how such actions can lead to misfortune.

Asked afterward about the relationship between writing and political activism, Soyinka remarked, "It is a matter of heart and imagination. As Arthur Miller showed in 'The Crucible,' you don't have to undergo an experience to empathize with someone else's situation."