Amos Tutuola Books

This is an excellent story about a hunter who is trying to find a cure from a witch herbalist. Like in his other books the main character seems to embody several characters which is taken to its extreme by the end of the book when is judged by the spirit of his kidney (called Judge Kidney).
Tutuola is one of the best known Nigerian authors. His writing style is unique and his talent has been promoted by no less than Dylan Thomas and T.S. Eliot. You really should read this book.

Amos Tutuola is one of the handful of master stylists in English of the 20th century. ``Witch-herbalist of the Remote Town'' is a mature work. Comparing it with his first published work (``Palm-wine Drinkard'') demonstrates that Tutuola is, in fact, a stylist and not, as it once seemed possible, a naive product of an unusual and scanty education in English in Nigeria. The compelling factor in his style is rhythm, presumably related to his mother tongue of Yoruba. It has something of the cyclical nature of extended drumming -- it is hard to stop reading it. Plot and characterization are not important in Tutuola's writing. ``Witch-herbalist'' is a simple story of a father's love for his child.

Every now and then the world's attention is drawn to a strange figure in the world of arts, a figure who "doesn't belong", who has not paid the proper dues and hasn't struggled up through the usual channels. No, that person suddenly rockets into the artistic firmament, does things in a totally unconventional way, and is immediately pounced upon and torn apart by those who have studied, worked, and sweated, dreaming of brilliant success. I think of somebody like Grandma Moses, who didn't start to paint until she was 78 and never attended a single art class, didn't know about a single "artistic convention", yet became one of the most popular American artists ever. The critics rewarded her by calling her "primitive". Yeah, right. Then, there was Niko Pirosmanishvili, a Georgian painter, who died in obscure poverty in 1918, having painted startlingly original images on any material he could get his hands on. The title "primitive" was bestowed on him also. Right here in my home town we had J.O.J. Frost, who painted scenes of the Marblehead he'd known as a child and events in the town's history. He painted on odd boards and tried, unsuccessfully, to sell his works for a nickel or a dime. After he died, he was recognized as a true artist and today his works are in New York and Washington. You can't get hold of one for love or less than a huge amount of money. A primitive. Amos Tutuola is a member of this little band, an original, a genius, a man who had no training, but just wanted to tell a lot of stories. If he'd written them in Yoruba, his mother tongue, we would never have heard his name. He wrote them in English, an English suffused with the tones and twists of West Africa. And guess what. Some African critics even felt ashamed of Tutuola's work, as it was not modern or European enough for them. Too primitive, right ? That word again. OK, for sure he doesn't write as smoothly as Hemingway or Turgenev; his grammar and spelling may leave something to be desired. But for those people who have not read Tutuola---don't miss your chance. If you love a story, if you love color and imagination, if you could like tales full of witches, magic, devils, and strange towns, if you are not totally wedded to the literary conventions set down by the critics, by the English departments of the world, then read Tutuola. "The Palm Wine Drinkard", "My Life in the Bush of Ghosts", or FEATHER WOMAN OF THE JUNGLE---all are great.

Tutuola's stories certainly do have connections to local Nigerian myths, traditional stories told for centuries. I will leave structural analysis to those so inclined. Unless you are familiar with the myths, though, everything will seem new. It seemed to me as I read through the account of six fabulous journeys that Tutuola's imagination had been fired by the cinema, both American and Indian. When mixed with the Yoruba tales, you certainly do have a fantastic result. If you are only interested in conventional novels, probably you'd better skip this book, but if you like Grandma Moses, if you like works by anyone who just fires away regardless of what critics say, then you're going to love FEATHER WOMAN OF THE JUNGLE. Original. Imaginative. Outstanding.

It's strange to read a book that you wished you had read years earlier. If I had read this book 20 years earlier, there would've been so many times I would've reflected on it.

What an experience. Accompanying the narrator, "Father of the gods who can do everything in this world," the reader escapes the difference between real or unreal, into where the two are the same. A book like none other i've ever come near, and i am not sure what i'd do if i did. There is no explanation, no need, just a story: creatures, trees, an alive bush, walking backward deads, menacing babies - one of which explodes from a thumb, trees within which lives "Faithful mother" who is faithful to all things - alive and dead, an egg that grants all wishes, much dancing, much music... So many things. This book is required reading for especially this, but every other, generation, for all "races" of folks, a book for which there can be no substitute. Purchase it, check out your local library, whatever, just read it. Then reread it.

Fairy-tales? Hah! See if your kid will go to sleep after hearing one of Tutuola's mad hallucinatory (not my word) yarns.

A seldom-discussed aspect of cultural anthropology is the metamorphosis of our fairy-tales--the imaginative currency of early youth which are passed on through family and social structures alike. In America, characters like witches, ghosts, and other creatures have their genesis in Europe, or can be traced even further back to ancient Indo-European cultures (of course, we have our own indigenous tales as well). These characters and stories have become so diluted over the years, that they've lost a lot of their original cultural meaning or relevance. What does this have to do with Amos Tutuola?

"My Life in the Bush of Ghosts" and "The Palm Wine Drinkard" are African tales in their pure unadulterated form. And they're not something you'd want to hear before bedtime! Amos Tutuola writes an English which lends the narration a wide-eyed, almost childlike voice--yet in the face of wild, horrific imagery (eg. armies of dead babies) the words are unflinching.

Tutuola is not for everybody, but for the adventurous reader I could not recommend this highly enough.

The introduction to My Life In the Bush of Ghosts, the first book in this two-for-one volume, makes you think that it's an anthropological work for class, not a story you're reading for fun. That's a shame, because these two stories are worth reading in their own right. But in comparison to the standard Western literary format, they are unquestionably different.

Most Western literature I read focuses on a cohesive narrative with a beginning, middle and end, a specific plot, and rich descriptions of characters, places, and emotions. That's not what happens here. Rather, the story unwinds in a very linear fashion, bit by bit, as the character passes through the ghost world he has stumbled into, seemingly at random. There is no surprise expressed by the protagonist when, for example, he meets a ghosts with televisions on her hands, or is transformed by a ghost into a monkey to go climb trees and pick nuts for the ghost to eat. These things are just stated as given, a part of the ongoing adventure. The passage of time is also a very fluid thing. A chapter, or several, can describe the events of a single hour and then a single sentence can describe the passing of a decade. It's a loose, free-flowing narrative built on the imagination of the author, and his ability to dream up ghosts wild, unexpected, and grotesque. It's an enjoyable ride but it takes some getting used to.

Reading them evoked similarities with fairy tales of Western culture: supernatural forces, shape-shifting, "monsters," battles between good and evil, etc.

At the same time, however, I was struck at how dissimilar these stories were to any fairy tale I'd ever read, or any other tale I'd read for that matter.

There is a tone of ease to the stories, of a casual approach to danger. It is though our "heroes" understand the significance of the crises they face, but they throw off the challenges with a shrug, since in their world, the "natural" and the "supernatural" interact all of the time b/c they live in close proximity with one another. After all, what's the worst that could happen? Death, in both of these stories, is a relative term at best, and is usually correctible.

This casual approach gives the stories a freer feeling of adventure, and allows one to accept anything that happens in these stories, no matter how wild it gets, since Tutuola's imagination in these stories is by turns hilarious, psychedelic, grotesque, and even frightening, but at all times unique.

At the same time, one gets a small taste of the mysticism, culture, and psychology of the West African Yoruba, from which Tutuola in part derives his tales. That taste filled me with a feeling of an entirely different world, one about which I knew nothing, but at the same time, one to which I could relate, as Tutuola's themes of redemption and devotion are common to us all.

The results are two stories that I adored, with no reservations whatsoever. They are simply two of the most wonderful stories I've ever read. As far as children are concerned, while these stories are violent and could certainly inspire nightmares, I intend to challenge my daughter with these stories as soon as she's able to understand what I'm saying, because I think she'll find them just as exciting and adventurous as her old man does.

Without question one of the best books of the 20th century. I can't recommend it more.

A wild romp, most of the meaning of which is probably inaccesible, but delightful and portenous and rich. Worth reading, worth studying, worth understanding

Amos Tutuola, a Nigerian writing in heavily-inflected English, transports his reader in an instant to a world which is at once magical and real, and more authentic than most of what's described as "magical realism". Tutuola draws from an oral tradition that is millenia old and, wizardlike, wrenches this ancient voice out of the bush and into the contemporary world. Darkly sparkling, "The Palm-Wine Drinkard" is gruesomely fantastical, erotic for its sheer sensuality, and utterly absorbing...as when the narrator is chased through a forest by bouncing skulls through which the shrill wind is whistling. One is removed to a magical realm, yet never leaves the African bush. Tutuola is a shaman, really, who composes odysseys. And the reader hears him chuckle even at the darkest of moments. For those of us who often grow civilization-weary, "The Palm-Wine Drinkard" is a wine unto itself, heavily hallucinatory! Highly recommended.

I bought the Bangla translated version of this book from a second-hand bookstore in Bangladesh. That one had biography of Amos Tutuola and a brief introduction about African folk tale, particularly the unique style of delivering the story by talking, acting and dancing. When I started reading the story itself, I found a class of literature that was completely different from East and West. This is not merely a folk tell, the writer has got unimaginable way of thinking in his brain. Read the first paragraph and you will find you are shocked. You can't stop reading until it is finished.

Amos Tutuola is a wonderful writer from Nigeria. He specializes in a kind of modernization of classic African lore. He is surely steeped in a lot of the myth and religion of the Yoruba. Simbi and the Satyr of the Dark Jungle is a wonderful tale. It begins with a wealthy Simbi growing bored of her fairy tale (ivory tower, perhaps?) existence. She wants to learn of the Poverty and Punishment. This beginning conjures thoughts of a young Siddhartha discovering suffering. But make no mistake, Tutuola is not just trying to rewrite the tale of Buddha. This is his own story. Simbi encounters terrible strife and suffering on her voyage. She learns what a terrible mistake it was to intentionally undertake to suffer. I enjoy this point. One should not bring suffering onto themselves. There is enough real suffering in the world already. It is a point that should be well taken but we shall see. I must also comment on the humor that Tutuola peppers throughout this tale. He is a writer with a comic flair. This is a fabulous fable for the twentieth as well as twenty-first centuries.