''Madmen and Specialists'' is a play by

Wole Soyinka Akinwande Oluwole Babatunde Soyinka (Yoruba: ''Akínwándé Olúwọlé Babátúndé Ṣóyíinká''; born 13 July 1934), known as Wole Soyinka (), is a Nigerian playwright, novelist, poet, and essayist in the English language. He was awarded t ...

, conceived in 1970 during his imprisonment in the

Nigerian Civil War The Nigerian Civil War (6 July 1967 – 15 January 1970), also known as the Nigerian–Biafran War or the Biafran War, was a civil war fought between Nigeria and the Republic of Biafra, a secessionist state which had declared its independence ...

. The play, Soyinka's eighth, has close links to the

Theatre of the Absurd The Theatre of the Absurd (french: théâtre de l'absurde ) is a post– World War II designation for particular plays of absurdist fiction written by a number of primarily European playwrights in the late 1950s. It is also a term for the style o ...

Abiola Irele Francis Abiola Irele (commonly Abiola Irele, 22 May 1936 – 2 July 2017) was a Nigerian academic best known as the doyen of Africanist literary scholars worldwide. He was Provost at Kwara State University, founded in 2009 in Ilorin, Nigeria. Befo ...

(in the Lagos ''Sunday Times'') called it "a nightmarish image of our collective life as it appears to a detached and reflective consciousness". It was published in London 1971 by Methuen and in New York in 1972 by

Hill & Wang Hill & Wang is an American book publishing company focused on American history, world history, and politics. It is a division of Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Hill & Wang was founded as an independent publishing house in 1956 by Arthur Wang (1917 ...

. ''Madmen and Specialists'' is considered Soyinka's most pessimistic play, dealing with "man's inhumanity and pervasive corruption in structures of power". The plot concerns Dr. Bero, a corrupt specialist, who imprisons and torments his physician father.

References

1970 plays Plays by Wole Soyinka Nigerian plays {{1970s-play-stub