The Queen's Reading Room

The Palm-Wine Drinkard

By Amos Tutuola

Recommended By Philip Pullman

For many readers in Britain this was our first glimpse of the powerful imaginative freedom that was stirring in African writing. It had a huge influence on me: the matter-of-fact presentation of the strangest things imaginable showed me a kind of storytelling I found immensely congenial, and made it possible to write in a voice I finally recognised as my own.
~ Philip Pullman

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Publish Date: 1952

The book follows an alcoholic man as he sets off on a journey through the land of the dead in search of his palm-wine tapster. Filled with terrifying supernatural beings and fearsome creatures, the novel draws from traditional Yoruba folktales and represent a seminal work of African literature.

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