The Palm-Wine Drinkard is the first book to go Viral
Tutuola’s first book was the first African novel to go viral. It was first published in 1952 in London, and immediately after an American publisher picked it up. It was then published in French in Paris soon after. It was such a popular novel that it earned a mention in the Vogue edition of 1953.
People are talking about…The Palm-wine Drinkard by Amos Tutuola, a West African novelist whose English is almost as vivid as his flaring imagination, which makes for a book about a journey to the dead that is even more odd than those best-sellers on climbing a mountain or diving deep into the sea.
The book has now been translated into more than 15 languages and is still in print.
