SOURCE: Wright, Derek. “Soyinka's Smoking Shotgun: The Later Satires.” World Literature Today 66, no. 1 (winter 1992): 27-34.

In the following essay, Wright explores the major themes of Soyinka's later “shotgun” satires, focusing on the political elements in such plays as A Play of Giants and Requiem for a Futurologist.

Wole Soyinka did not coin the term shotgun writing—“you discharge and disappear”—until the 1970s.¹ He had, however, produced occasional subversive satiric sketches throughout the previous decade, and his unpublished one-act Royal Court entertainment The Invention (1959), a caustic tour de force on universal racism set in a futuristic South Africa, had been written in the broad satiric tradition of the revue. During the deepening crisis of Nigeria's First Republic, as political murders became more frequent and blatant intimidation by power-addicted local chiefs escalated daily, Soyinka opted increasingly for the direct thrust and immediate corrective impact of the revue sketch performed...