The Palm-Wine Drinkard
Amos Tutuola
A quest through the land of the dead, told in improvised English.
Tutuola drew on Yoruba oral folklore to spin a fantastical journey after a dead palm-wine tapster, written in an idiosyncratic, ungrammatical English all his own. Its 1952 London publication made it the first West African novel to reach a wide international readership, provoking argument at home about "proper" English while proving that indigenous storytelling could drive prose fiction.
Its legacy. Championed by Dylan Thomas, it opened European doors to African writing.
- Author
- Amos Tutuola
- First published
- 1952
- Genre
- Novel
- Theme
- The West African Novel
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