![]() ![]() There are many encounters that lead to singing and dancing, which create an impression of entrancing performativity. The episodic storyline draws on Yoruba folktales and uses English in non-traditional ways, invoking a sustained spoken rhythm. Along the way, our hero encounters adventures wonderful, bizarre, horrific and – in case the premise and first lines haven’t made it clear – funny. ![]() The story is a quest narrative that follows its first-person protagonist on his journey into other villages and maybe other worlds, inhabited by creatures living and dead, in pursuit of his deceased palm-wine tapster. I had no other work than to drink palm-wine in my life.” So begins Amos Tutuola’s famed The Palm-Wine Drinkard, which came out in 1952 and is widely feted as the first West African novel in English published internationally. “I was a palm-wine drinkard since I was a boy of ten years of age. Scholar of literary & cultural studies, editor of poco.lit. ![]()
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