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      The Palm-Wine Drinkard

      by Amos Tutuola
      Published
      Mar 1970
      Main Genre
      Literary Literary
      Pages
      130
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      About This Book

      Amos Tutuola's masterful first novel of a nightmarish quest into the land of the dead, now available in a standalone volume with an introduction by Wole Soyinka

      Widely considered to be his masterpiece, Amos Tutuola's debut novel The Palm-Wine Drinkard was first published in 1952. Named one of TIME's "100 Best Fantasy Books of All Time" and introduced here by Wole Soyinka, the novel tells the phantasmagorical story of a wealthy alcoholic who drinks 225 kegs of palm wine a day. When the man's personal tapster dies and leaves him without any remaining supply of alcohol, the man desperately follows the tapster into the nightmarish Dead's Town. Drawing on Yoruba folklore and narrated with a unique voice that mixes West African oral traditions with the Colonial British English that Tutuola learned at school, The Palm-Wine Drinkard is a seminal work of African literature from one of Nigeria's most influential writers and an important part of the global literary canon.

      Genres & Themes

      Genres

      General Fiction

      Subgenres

      Literary

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      Formats & Editions

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      Paperback

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      Jul 2014 Faber and Faber (UK) ISBN13 9780571311538 ISBN10 0571311539
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      Hardcover

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      Hardcover
      First Edition Mar 1970 Praeger ISBN13 9780837140445 ISBN10 0837140447
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      eBook

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      Jun 2025 Grove Press ISBN13 9780802164216 ISBN10 0802164218
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      Jun 2025 Faber and Faber (UK) ISBN13 9780571311545 ISBN10 0571311547
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      Jun 2025 -- Not Selected ISBN10 B0DHWKBP7H
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