Amos Tutuola Biography and List of Works

Nigerian writer, who gained world fame with his story THE PALM-WINE DRINKARD. "I was a palm-wine drinkard since I was a boy of ten years of age," the novel begins. It is based upon Yoruba folktales, but in his own country Tutuola was accused of falsifications and uncivilized language. The novel is a transcription in pidgin English prose of an oral tale of his own invention. It recounts the archetypal tale of a drunken man who follows his dead tapster into the next world and in his quest encounters scenes both comic and horrible. According to the Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe, Tutuola's works can also be read as moral tales commenting upon Western consumerism: "What happens when a man immerses himself in pleasure to the exclusion of all work?"

"But of course, there are two kinds of people on earth.
One - The people of the towns are more sensible than tortoises.
Two - The wild people of the jungles are as senseless as donkeys."
(from The Witch-Herbalist of the Remote Town, 1981)

Tutuola was born in Abeokuta, and heard his first folk stories at his Yoruba-speaking mother's knee. He attended the Salvation Army primary school. Tutola then worked as a live-in houseboy for a government clerk in order to ensure his tuition at an Anglican school, which was covered by his employer. When his father died in 1939, Tutuola had to end his studies. During World War II he worked for the Royal Air Forces, and tried a number of other vocations, including farming, blacksmithing, selling bread, and messenger for the Nigerian Department of Labour.

In 1946 Tutuola completed his first full-length book, The Palm-Wine Drinkard. He married Victoria Alake the following year. In the 1950s Tutuola published MY LIFE IN A BUSH OF GHOSTS (1954), an underworld odyssey, SAMBI AND THE SATYR OF THE DARK JUNGLE (1955) and THE BRAVE AFRICAN HUNTRESS (1958).

"All of Tutuola's books present an oddly timeless world where ancient Yoruba folkloric and religious realities simultaneously exist with Western Christian and scientific realities... While no explicit references are given by the author to major events in Africa's colonial and postcolonial history, it is easy to be struck by how the persistently repeated motif of "trial by fire," a passage heroically won by demonstrations of courage, ingenuity, faith, and intensively focused and lengthy labour, speaks to the present political, social and economic realities of postcolonial Africa."
(Norman Weinstein in Post-Colonial African Writers, ed. by Pushipa Naidu Parekh and Siga Fatima Jagne, 1998)

After The Palm-Wine Drinkard Tutuola never had quite the same success, although he has continued to be a prolific explorer of his story-telling culture. Among his later works are the novels THE WITCH-HERBALIST OF THE REMOTE TOWN (1981) and THE VILLAGE WICH DOCTOR AND OTHER STORIES (1990). Throughout many of his most productive years Tutuola worked as a storekeeper for the Nigerian Broadcasting Company. In 1979 he was a research fellow at the University of Ife and then an associate of the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa. In the late 1980s Tutola moved to Ibadan. He died on June 8, 1997.

For further reading: Seven African Writers by Gerald Moore (1962); Amos Tutuola by Harold R. Collins (1969); Language and Theme by Emmanuel R. Obiechina (1970); Mother is Gold by Adrian A. Roscoe (1971); Perspectives on African Literature, ed. by Christopher Hewywood (11971); Critical Perspectives on Amos Tutuola, ed. by Bernth Lindfors (1975); Culture and the Nigerian Novel by Oladele Taiwo (1976); Hope and Impediments by Chinua Achebe (1988); Post-Colonial African Writers, ed. by Pushipa Naidu Parekh and Siga Fatima Jagne (1998) - See also: Wole Soyinka, who was born in Yoruba, and Dylan Thomas and T.S. Eliot whose support was required to secure the publication The Palm-Wine Drinkard in Britain.

THE PALM-WINE-DRINKARD, (1952)
MY LIFE IN THE BUSH OF GHOSTS, (1954)
SIMBI AND THE SATYR OF THE DARK JUNGLE, (1955)
THE BRAVE AFRICAN HUNTRESS, (1958)
THE FEATHER WOMAN OF THE JUNGLE, (1962)
AJAIYI AND HIS INHERITED POVERTY, (1967)
WITCH-HERBALIST OF THE REMOTE TOWN, (1981)
THE WILD HUNTER IN THE BUSH OF GHOSTS, (1982)
YORUBA FOLKTALES, (1986)