If you read or write or dream 'sword and soul,' some classics are must-reads. Amos Tutuola's Palm-Wine Drinkard is one of the wildest stories I've ever read--with babies that sprout from thumbs, skulls that talk and ghosts of every type. It moves from scene to scene so quickly you have to keep up, and is written in a distinctly African style for Western readers. Pick it up if you haven't and strap in for the ride, because here's just about nothing like it...
The Palm-Wine Drinkard and my life in the bush of ghosts-- Amos Tutuola
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.
Author bio: http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/tutuola.htm
Review: http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/orgs/e3w/Tutuola
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