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Amos Tutuola
The Palm Wine Drinkard
Grove Press, 1993 (From the collection "The Palm Wine
Drinkard and My Life in the Bush of Ghosts")
307 pages$16
Reviewed by Lauren Gantz
Originally published in 1952, Amos Tutuolas The Palm
WineDrinkardholds an important placein the history of African
literatures. The late Oyekan Owomoyela, Yoruba scholar and
author ofAfrican Literatures: An Introduction(1979) andAmos
Tutuola Revisited(1999), claimed Tutuolas novel as the first
work of print literature about Africa by a black African. Given
its
primary status, Tutuolas novel also marks the emergence of
debates about what African literature should be. Western
literary figuresmost significantly Dylan Thomas, who pushed
for the novels publicationpraisedTutuolas unique prose style
and use of Yoruba oral tradition. The exoticism of The Palm
Wine Drinkard made it a phenomenon throughout Europe,
where it was read in over a dozen languages. However, in
Tutuolas native Nigeria, the novel garnered more
criticalresponses. Tutuolas use of pidgin English, superstition,
and a
protagonist who claims to drinkpalm wine from morning till
night led some Nigerian intellectuals to worry that the book
fed
into European stereotypes of backward and shiftless
Africans. Despite this initial controversy, later Nigerian
writers
such as Chinua Achebe embraced the text and encouraged
readers to reconsider the novel.
Tutuolas work depicts the travels of its titular character,
the
self-described palm wine drinkard. For those unfamiliar with
the beverage, palm wine is an alcoholic drink made from the
sap
of palm trees, which must be collected by a tapper. Tutuolas
protagonist has such a tremendous thirst for wine that he
must
employ an expert palm-wine tapster who taps over two-
hundred kegs of the drink per day. Unfortunately for the
drinkard, one day his tapster falls from a palm tree and dies.
No
other tapster can satisfy his thirst for wine, so the drinkard
seeks
the wisdom of the elderly in his village, who were saying
that
the whole people who had died in this world, did not go to
heaven directly, but they were living in one place somewhere
in
this world. Believing that his tapster now resides in Deads
Town, the drinkard summons all his native juju, or magic,
and
sets off hoping to find and re-employ the dead man.
His journey, often marked by nightmarish encounters with
strange creatures, takes the form of episodic adventures
that
gradually move him further fr om hom e. In the most
significant
of his early exploits, the palm wine drinkard rescues a
young
woman, whom he will eventually marry, from a family of
Skulls that has captured her and held her prisoner.
Together,
the couple moves into the bush country, crossing the borders
of
various kingdoms inhabited by odd creatures, such as Wraith
Island, Unreturnable-Heavens Town, and Red-Town,
where they suffer numerous delays and hardships. When they
finally reach Deads Town, ten years after the protagonist
started his journey, the drinkard learns that his dead
tapster
cannot return home with him because a dead man could not
live with alives. Disappointed, but given a magical gift,
the
drinkard must make the journey back home with his wife to
help
Home>>Volume 8 (Spring 2008)>> Writing the African
Imaginary>> Lauren Gantz on "The Palm Wine Drinkard"
Lauren Gantz on "The Palm Wine Drinkard"
ABOUT THIS CONTRIBUTOR
LAURENGANTZ is a PhD student in English
at The University of Texas at Austin. Her
research interests include twentieth century
American wom ens literatures and American
ethnic literatures.
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