The Palm-Wine Drinkard

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

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, 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.