13 Facts About Amos Tutuola

Amos Tutuola was a Nigerian writer who wrote books based in part on Yoruba folk-tales.

Amos Olatubosun Tutuola Odegbami was born on 20 June 1920, in Wasinmi, a village just a few miles outside of Abeokuta, Nigeria, where his parents, Charles Tutuola Odegbami and Esther Aina Odegbami, who were Yoruba Christian cocoa farmers, lived.

When his father died in 1939, Amos 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.

Amos Tutuola subsequently tried a number of other vocations, including selling bread and acting as messenger for the Nigerian Department of Labour.

In 1946, Amos Tutuola completed his first full-length book, The Palm-Wine Drinkard, within two days.

Amos Tutuola is the uncle of the Nigerian footballers Segun Odegbami and Wole Odegbami.

Amos Tutuola became one of the founders of the Mbari Club, the writers' and publishers' organization.

Amos Tutuola died at the age of 76 on 8 June 1997 from hypertension and diabetes.

Amos Tutuola's works have been translated into 11 languages, including French, German, Russian, and Polish.

Now, in all that he has done, Amos Tutuola is not sui generis.

Amos Tutuola has handled his material with all of the skill of the good story teller and he has been able to endow it with the qualities of a "well-told-tale".

Amos Tutuola deserves to be considered seriously because his work represents an intentional attempt to fuse folklore with modern life.

The Palm-Wine Drinkard was followed by My Life in the Bush of Ghosts in 1954 and then several other books in which Amos Tutuola continued to explore Yoruba traditions and folklore, although none of the subsequent works managed to match the success of The Palm Wine Drinkard.