The Palm-Wine Drinkard and My Life in the Bush of Ghosts

Amos Tutuola

Book cover for The Palm-Wine Drinkard and My Life in the Bush of Ghosts
Book cover for The Palm-Wine Drinkard and My Life in the Bush of Ghosts

The Palm-Wine Drinkard and My Life in the Bush of Ghosts

The Palm-Wine Drinkard and My Life in the Bush of Ghosts

Amos Tutuola

Member Benefits

  • 30% Off All Books - Savings that support storytellers, not stock prices.
  • Fight Book Bans - Every membership sends a book to LGBTQ+ youth in affected states.
Member Book Price
$17.00 $11.90
Non-Member Book Price $17.00

An annual membership will be billed at $48/year.

Discount applies to first-time members only. Already a member? Log in here.
View full details

Description
When Amos Tutuola's first novel, The Palm-Wine Drinkard, appeared in 1952, it aroused exceptional worldwide interest. Drawing on the West African Yoruba oral folktale tradition, Tutuola described the odyssey of a devoted palm-wine drinker through a nightmare of fantastic adventure. Since then, The Palm-Wine Drinkard has been translated into more than 15 languages and has come to be regarded as a masterwork of one of Africa's most influential writers. Tutuola's second novel, My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, recounts the fate of mortals who stray into the world of ghosts, the heart of the tropical forest. Here, as every hunter and traveler knows, mortals venture at great peril, and it is here that a small boy is left alone.

Critical Reviews

Praise for Amos Tutuola:


"Tutuola, writing at a moment when the Yoruba culture he was born into was colliding with that of British Colonialism and Christian proselytism, weaves in aspects of the new West African modernity with Yoruba myth and oral storytelling so seamlessly you could blink and miss it. And the language, too, feels unique to the moment: Tutuola uses the Colonial British he learned in Anglican school to create a more propulsive and energetic version of English to tell the stories of Western Africa." --Elijah Wolfson, Time Magazine, 100 Best Fantasy Books of All Time


"Regardless of whether you attribute the success of the book to Tutuola's genius or just to the richness of Yoruban folklore, it's an undeniably amazing read: bizarre, exquisite, consistently hilarious, and at once lighthearted and profound." -- Granta Magazine, Best Book of 1952


"That mythic dimension is what I'm most interested in -- the way Tutuola blends the supernatural world seamlessly with human reality." -- Chigozie Obioma, Financial Times


"Brief, thronged, grisly, and bewitching." -- Dylan Thomas, Observer



Publishing Information

Publisher: Grove Press
Pub date: 1993-12-15
Length: 256 pages

The Allstora Membership

Membership Perks:

  • Save 30% on all online store purchases
  • Exclusive access to author's content
  • You pay less, but authors still earn double

Membership Terms:

First Month: $0.00
Monthly price: $5.00
  • To access membership discount simply log in and add to cart, discount applied automatically.
  • One month free trial, cancel anytime. Membership renews on the 15th of each month.