Amos Tutuola

Nigerian literary pioneer who blended Yoruba folklore with modernist prose

Amos Tutuola (1920-1997) exploded Western literary conventions with his 1952 debut The Palm-Wine Drinkard. Written in non-standard English, this phantasmagoric journey through Yoruba cosmology became both controversial and influential, praised by Dylan Thomas as bewitching imagination.

Linguistic analysis shows Tutuola's prose contains 87% Nigerian Pidgin structures, creating what Salman Rushdie called linguistic cubism. His works preserved oral traditions during Nigeria's colonial transition, documented in the Library of Congress Nigeria collections.

Modern writers like Ben Okri cite Tutuola's spirit-inhabited landscapes as foundational to Afrofuturism. His original manuscripts, filled with visual symbols rather than standard punctuation, are studied in contemporary art exhibitions.