Amos Tutuola was a Nigerian writer who wrote books based in part on Yorubafolk-tales.
Early history
Amos Tutuola was born Olatubosun Odegbami in Wasinmi, a village just a few miles outside of Abeokuta, Nigeria, on June 20, 1920, where his parents Charles Tutuola Odegbami and Esther Aina Odegbami - who were Yoruba Christian cocoa farmers - lived. Wasinmi was a small farming village founded by a group of people of the subethnic group from Abeokuta that included his father. He was the youngest son of his father and his mother was his father's third wife. His grandfather the Odafin of Egbaland, Chief Odegbami, patriarch of the Odegbami clan, was a chieftain of the Egba people and a traditional worshipper of the Yoruba religion. His title "Odafin" signified that he had an administrative position within the traditional administraton of the Egbaland, and was one of the Iwarefa of the Ogboni. When he was seven years old, in 1927, Amos became a servant for F. O. Monu, an Igbo man, who sent him to the Salvation Army primary school in lieu of wages. At age 12, he attended the Anglican Central School in Abeokuta. His brief education was limited to six years. After his grandfather's death in 1936, most members of the family decided to adopt the European style of naming and take his name, Odegbami, as their last name. However, many members of the family, like Amos, decided to take their father's name, Tutuola. That is how his last name became Tutuola. When his father died in 1939, Tutuola left school to train as a blacksmith, the trade he practised from 1942 to 1945 for the Royal Air Force in Nigeria during WWII. He subsequently tried a number of other vocations, including selling bread and acting as messenger for the Nigerian Department of Labour. In 1946, Tutuola completed his first full-length book, The Palm-Wine Drinkard, within a few days. In 1947 he married Victoria Alake, with whom he had four sons and four daughters. However, he also married 3 other wives. He is the uncle of the Nigerian footballers Segun Odegbami and Wole Odegbami.
Writing
Despite his short formal education, Tutuola wrote his novels in English. In 1956, after he had written his first three books and become internationally famous, he joined the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation in Ibadan, Western Nigeria as a storekeeper. Tutuola also became one of the founders of the Mbari Club, the writers' and publishers' organization. In 1979, he held a visiting research fellowship at the University of Ife at Ile-Ife, Nigeria, and in 1983 he was an associate of the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa. In retirement he divided his time between residences Ibadan and Ago-Odo. Tutuola died at the age of 76 on 8 June 1997 from hypertension and diabetes. Many of his papers, letters, and holographic manuscripts have been collected at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas, Austin. Tutuola's works have been translated into 11 languages, including French, German, Russian, and Polish. Some translators, notably Raymond Queneau and Ernestyna Skurjat, deliberately adjusted the grammar and syntax of the translations, to reflect the occasionally atypical language of Tutuola's original prose.
Tutuola's most famous novel, The Palm-Wine Drinkard and his Dead Palm-Wine Tapster in the Deads' Town, was written in 1946, first published in 1952 in London by Faber and Faber, then translated and published in Paris as L'Ivrogne dans la brousse by Raymond Queneau in 1953. Poet Dylan Thomas brought it to wide attention, calling it "brief, thronged, grisly and bewitching". Although the book was praised in England and the United States, it faced severe criticism in Tutuola's native Nigeria. Part of this criticism was due to his use of "broken English" and primitive style, which supposedly promoted the Western stereotype of "African backwardness". This line of criticism has, however, lost steam. In the opinion of Taban Lo Liyong: Omolara Ogundipe-Leslie in her own reassessment wrote in The Journal of Commonwealth Studies: O. R. Dathorne additionally said: J. P. Sartre, contrasting poetry in French by Frenchmen and Africans, declared: Wole Soyinka wrote in 1963: The Palm-Wine Drinkard was followed up by My Life in the Bush of Ghosts in 1954 and then several other books in which Tutuola continued to explore Yoruba traditions and folklore. Strangely, the narrative of The Palm-Wine Drinkard refers back to The several times, even though the latter was written and published later. However, none of the subsequent works managed to match the success of The Palm Wine Drinkard.
The name of a detective on the television show is Odafin Tutuola. In the first pages of the introduction of The Palm Wine Drinkard, Michael Thelwell writes that the author's grandfather was an Odafin, a chieftain, and Tutuola was the given name of Amos Tutuola's father. Brian Eno and David Byrne took the title of the novelMy Life in the Bush of Ghosts for their 1981 album. One of the characters of the gamebook The Race Forever, from the Choose Your Own Adventure collection, is named after Amos Tutuola. In 2015, the Society of Young Nigerian Writers, under the leadership of Wole Adedoyin, founded the Amos Tutuola Literary Society, aimed at promoting and reading the works of Amos Tutuola. The video game Vendetta: the Curse of Raven's Cry, which takes place in the 17th century Caribbean archipelago, includes a side storyline concerning a self-liberated and self-governing clan of African Maroons, whose spiritual guide and medicine man is named Tutuola. Writer Jaromir Król confirmed that the name was a deliberate homage to Amos Tutuola; he considered the Nigerian author's stories astonishing and unforgettable since he had first read them at age 6, and felt that the thoughtful, philosophical and noble character was worthy of being given Amos Tutuola's name.
