The Palm-Wine Drinkard.

London: Faber and Faber Ltd,, 1952. A classic of modern African literature First edition, first impression, of Tutuola's first published novel, which brought him international recognition. "He could hardly have had more distinguished literary godparents, because it was T.S. Eliot at Faber and Faber who recommended that his first book, The Palm-Wine Drinkard and His Dead Palm-Wine Tapster in the Deads' Town, should be published in 1952 and it was Dylan Thomas who gave it its first prominent review, when he praised this 'brief, thronged, grisly and bewitching... tall, devilish story'. The Palm-Wine Drinkard has become a classic of modern African literature, widely taught and successfully adapted as a folk opera in Nigeria. In it Tutuola retells many of the stories he first heard as a child in Abeokuta, a Yoruba-speaking town in western Nigeria where he was born in 1920" (Niven). The son of a cocoa farmer, Tutuola attended several schools before training as a blacksmith, and later working as a civil servant. Octavo. Original red-orange cloth, spine lettered in dark green. With dust jacket. Ownership signature to front free endpaper, light wear at spine ends, endpapers a little browned, contents a little toned, a good copy in like jacket, chipped affecting lettering, long split to rear fold repaired with tape on verso. Alastair Niven, Obituary: Amos Tutuola, Independent, 15 June 1997.