AMOS TUTUOLA (1920 - 1997)

In many ways the Nigerian writer, Amos Tutuola was a special writer, the first from his country to publish a celebrated imaginative work in the western world. The novel in question was titled The Palmwine Drinkard.

From the very beginning (1952), with the publication of The Palmwine Drinkard, Tutuola was hailed and heralded more or less globally. He would go on to write and publish many other captivating books. Yet, Tutuola was a "semi-literate", though these things can be relative; he had like 6 or 7 years of formal education, but preferred to write his books in English, and western critics were very much enamoured with his "folk-loric" books Tutuola had a long literary career despite a lot of criticism (ironically from his own fellow Yorubas/Nigerians) many of whom found it difficult to appreciate his style of writing, allusions, grammar etc. But the man kept on writing, and the proliferating reviews and literary criticism of his books kept on gathering momentum over the decades.

For some 60 years now, the literary evaluation of Amos Tutuola's works has been a constant thread, not only in the Eurocentric world, but also in Africa. Exalted literary scholars all over the world have been very interested in Tutuola's writings; including "white" reviewers and critics like Dylan Thomas, Kingsley Amis, Gerald Moore, Harold Collins, Ulli Beier, Charles R Larson, and Bernth Lindfors. And not only Eurocentric critics. Top notch African scholars like Emmanuel Obiechina, Chinua Achebe, Omolara Ogundipe Leslie, Eldred Jones, Taban lo Liyong, A Afolayan have written substantial literary essays on Tutuola. And even a young Wole Soyinka evaluated the significance of Tutuola and his books.

Sundry commentary on Tutuola's work has been coming to the surface over the decades. For example, an early writer noted: "Since then this eager author (ie Tutuola after the publication of his second book) has sent some short stories, based on folk lore to the BBC. Three have been broadcast: interesting when you remember that a convention has been established that script writing is quite a different art form from written matter meant to be read silently. Tutuola has succeeded in both fields, using precisely the same technique..." Great wordsmith, the late Tutuola.