Amos Tutuola (20 June 1920 – 8 June 1997) was a Nigerian writer famous for his books based in part on Yoruba folk-tales. Tutuola was born in 1920 in Abeokuta, Nigeria, to a cocoa farmer, Charles Tutuola, and his wife, Esther. Among his most well-known works is “The Palm-Wine Drinkard and His Dead Palm-Wine Tapster in the Deads’ Town” (1952), the first Nigerian novel that gained international recognition.
After attending missionary primary schools, Tutuola worked on his father’s farm. He was trained as a coppersmith during the second World War. He worked as a blacksmith and at other jobs from1939 until his first novel was published. He was motivated by D.O. Fagunwa, a Nigerian author who had previously written comparable folk fantasies in Yoruba. Tutuola was also familiar with The Thousand and One Nights, Pilgrim’s Progress, and other episodic works that served as textbooks at his Salvation Army primary school.
He also worked for the Royal Air Force from 1943 through 1945, and following the end of the war, Tutuola attempted unsuccessfully to establish his own blacksmith shop. In 1947 he married Alake Victoria. A year later, he secured a position as a messenger for the Labor Department in Lagos.
Despite his short formal education, Tutuola wrote his novels in English. In 1956, after he had written his first three books and become internationally famous, he joined the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation in Ibadan, Western Nigeria as a storekeeper. Tutuola also became one of the founders of the Mbari Club, the writers’ and publishers’ organization.
In 1979, he held a visiting research fellowship at the University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University) at Ile-Ife, Nigeria, and in 1983 he was an associate of the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa. In retirement he divided his time between residences Ibadan and Ago-Odo.
By 1983, he was serving as an associate in the international writing program at the University of Iowa. Having published other novels and short stories, Tutuola returned to Nigeria and continued to write until his death in 1997.
Tutuola’s The Palm-Wine Drunkard and subsequent works integrate Yoruba myths and legends into loosely constructed prose epics that innovate on classic Yoruba folktale themes. The Palm-Wine Drinkard is a famous quest story in which the hero, a lazy youngster who enjoys drinking palm wine, obtains knowledge, encounters death, and overcomes numerous obstacles on his trip.
The Palmwine Drinkard is considered the first African novel to go viral. It’s the first to be published in London, and the following year, an American edition was released. Vogue Magazine also gave the novel a mention in a 1953 issue, and the book has been translated into eleven languages.
Also, Tutuola appears to have written the popular novel for the pure love of the trade, rather than for money. It was reported that after Thomas Nelson rejected the manuscript, Faber and Faber accepted it and paid Tutuola $50 (about $400 today) in royalties for the first edition. His writing never made him wealthy asyhe spent his entire life in the civil service, including as a messenger in Lagos’ Labor Department and subsequently as a storekeeper for the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation.
Tutuola’s vivid exposition of Yoruba mythology and religion, as well as his command of literary form, earned him a large following in Britain, Africa, and the United States. Others’ theatrical and operatic versions of The Palm-Wine Drinkard have also been well received.
Tutuola was shown significantly more recognition and admiration abroad than at home in Nigeria. In 1984, he received the Grinzane Cavour Prize for Best Foreign Fiction.
Publications by Amos Tutuola
- The village witch doctor & other stories / Amos Tutuola. – London [etc.] : Faber and Faber, 1990
- Pauper, brawler and slanderer / Amos Tutuola. – London [etc.] : Faber and Faber, 1987
- Ajaiyi and his inherited poverty / Amos Tutuola. – London [etc.] : Faber and Faber, [1967]
- Feather woman of the jungle / Amos Tutuola. – London [etc.] : Faber and Faber, 1962
- The palm-wine drinkard and his dead palm-wine tapster in the Deads’ town / Amos Tutuola. – London [etc.] : Faber and Faber, 1962
Quotes by Amos Tutuola
“I was a palm-wine drinkard since I was a boy of ten years of age. I had no other work more than to drink palm-wine in my life. – – – But when my father noticed that I could not do any work more than to drink, he engaged an expert palm-wine-tapster for me; he had no other work more than to tap palm-wine every day. So my father gave me a palm-tree farm which was nine miles square and it contained 560,000 palm-trees, and this palm-wine tapster was tapping one hundred and fifty kegs of palm-wine every morning, but before 2 o’clock p.m., I would have drunk it all; after that he would go and tap another 75 kegs.” ― The Palm-Wine Drinkard
“But I did not know that all that I was thinking in mind was going to the hearing of the inhabitants of these three rooms, so at the same moment that I wanted to move my body to go the room from which the smell of the African’s food was rushing to me […] there I saw that these three rooms which had no doors and windows opened unexpectedly and three kinds of ghosts peeped at me, every one of them pointed his finger to me to come to him.” ــــــــ My Life in the Bush of Ghosts
“When we traveled for two and half days, we reached the Deads’ road from which dead babies drove us, and when we reached there, we could not travel on it because of fearful dead babies, etc. which were still on it.” — The Palm-Wine Drinkard
