This is such a *fun* book, and totally unlike anything else I've ever read. The folk tale origins are pretty recognisable but even then it's told in a style that's very unlike how you'd expect folk tales to be told, at least in English. The style is very matter of fact about absolutely everything. It's funny reading 2 paragraph about how he and his wife organised a ferry service using magic with exact details of the money they made and how they needed it for buying food (when of course there's no mention of them needing food on their wide ranging travels otherwise)... and then 2 pages later they just lose it all having used it for nothing. The disconnect between the matter of fact fantasy and the out of place real life details, particularly those connected to British colonial administration, makes the latter seem absurd and unreal in a way the strange supernatural isn't. It's incredibly hard to convey what's so magical about the experience of reading it because so much of it is bound up in the way it uses the language and how masterful the author's command of it is even though it's deceptively simple. The "plot" is absurd, everything that happens is absurd, and it's beautiful. Special shout out to the image of meeting hundreds of dead babies on the road who beat you with sticks. ( )

All kinds of awesome.

The unnamed protagonist meanders through a fabulous mosaic of folk tales. Reminds me of books like the Red Fairy Book by Andrew Lang (1890), The Palm-Wine Drinkard (1952) has that same delightful lack of self-consciousness and weird, rambly lack of adherence to more conventional and more modern writing traditions.

When the un-named narrator's palm-wine tapster falls from a tree and dies, the narrator travels through a mythological landscape to find him in the Dead's Town and bring him back.

Noteworthy as the first English-language novel written by an African and published outside Africa rather than for its intrinsic interest. ( )

This is a work of folklore or fairytale, a bit like the seven voyages of sindbad in the Arabian Nights, or maybe a bit like Alice in Wonderland.
Its written in broken english and is very imaginative. If it had been really short i'd probably have scored it a 4/5 but all it has going for it for me is its novelty factor. Personally i find fairy-tales or things like Alice in Wonderland to be quite boring and difficult to read and by the end of this i'd lost interest. ( )

In a recent NY Times Book Review article, Nigerian writer Chigozie Obioma told a story about how when he was frequently ill as a child, his father would tell him wild stories. Puzzled as to why this stopped, he asked his father for an explanation, who explained that Chigozie was now old enough to read on his own, handing him The Palm-Wine Drinkard. It turns out his father had no imagination whatsoever and the stories were all from this book by Amos Tutuola.

The protagonist is a drunk, having started early at age 10. His father hires a tapster, who falls out of a tree and dies, at which point, the drunk decides to find him no matter what. The reader is then carried into the African bush on a psychedelic, magical mystery tour of numerous West African folk tales. Weird, compelling, gruesome, fantastic, alternating dark and light, magical realism. ( )