SUMMARY
The Palm-Wine Drinkard (and his dead Palm-Wine Tapster in the Dead's Town) is a Yorùbá folkloric novel that tells the tale (from first-person perspective) of a man named "Father Of Gods Who Could Do Anything In This World" who has an undying love for Palm-wine, as he sets out to find his prolific, albeit dead tapster. His story is one of journey within journey; each with increasingly strange creatures. And circumstances. And demands...
THE PLOT
The book opens, as the title might've implied, with a man telling us he has been drinking since he was 10. He owned, by virtue of his father's affluence, a huge farmland with numerous palm trees where an expert tapster would tap a hundred and fifty kegs of palm wine everyday -- a quantity he finishes before 2pm.
Then his tapster fell from the neck of a tree and died. While mourning the loss of his great, loyal servant, he recollected that 'old people' say that dead souls live in an otherworldly place after death -- rather than go straight to heaven. So he set out to find his dead tapster.
In exchange for info about the whereabouts of his tapster, he undertook a series of assignments for an oldman (a god) that was willing to trade him the location of his dead tapster if he (FatherOfgodsWhoCouldDoAnythingInThisWorld) could abduct death. With cunny trickery and no small amount of juju, he surprises everyone by successfully capturing death in a net, upon which everyone in that town dispersed and he, disgruntled at not knowing the location of his tapster, dropped death. Since then, death has had no permanent place to dwell...
He went on another assignment to rescue a girl who followed "an unknown man's beauty"; another mythical creature with borrowed body parts. The lady was betrothed to him, she conceived a baby in her thumb..
On his travels, he saw drum beat itself, heard song singing, saw dance dancing and also heard laugh laughing..
The book opens, as the title might've implied, with a man telling us he has been drinking since he was 10. He owned, by virtue of his father's affluence, a huge farmland with numerous palm trees where an expert tapster would tap a hundred and fifty kegs of palm wine everyday -- a quantity he finishes before 2pm.
Then his tapster fell from the neck of a tree and died. While mourning the loss of his great, loyal servant, he recollected that 'old people' say that dead souls live in an otherworldly place after death -- rather than go straight to heaven. So he set out to find his dead tapster.
In exchange for info about the whereabouts of his tapster, he undertook a series of assignments for an oldman (a god) that was willing to trade him the location of his dead tapster if he (FatherOfgodsWhoCouldDoAnythingInThisWorld) could abduct death. With cunny trickery and no small amount of juju, he surprises everyone by successfully capturing death in a net, upon which everyone in that town dispersed and he, disgruntled at not knowing the location of his tapster, dropped death. Since then, death has had no permanent place to dwell...
He went on another assignment to rescue a girl who followed "an unknown man's beauty"; another mythical creature with borrowed body parts. The lady was betrothed to him, she conceived a baby in her thumb..
On his travels, he saw drum beat itself, heard song singing, saw dance dancing and also heard laugh laughing..
MY VERDICT
"....this palm-wine tapster was tapping 150kegs of palm-wine every morning, but before 2pm, I would've drunk all of it"
That statement is in the opening paragraph of the book. You now what you're in for! A litany of fantastical tales filled with humorous exaggerations. Written in a tattered, yet understandable kinda English, one will find, at various intervals in the book, lots of pointless, unfunny literature. Yet, there are amusing bits within the confines of the book: "...there we saw a man who was walking towards his back or backwards, his both eyes were on his knees, his both arms were at his..."
The apologues are really entertaining as well.
"....this palm-wine tapster was tapping 150kegs of palm-wine every morning, but before 2pm, I would've drunk all of it"
That statement is in the opening paragraph of the book. You now what you're in for! A litany of fantastical tales filled with humorous exaggerations. Written in a tattered, yet understandable kinda English, one will find, at various intervals in the book, lots of pointless, unfunny literature. Yet, there are amusing bits within the confines of the book: "...there we saw a man who was walking towards his back or backwards, his both eyes were on his knees, his both arms were at his..."
The apologues are really entertaining as well.
Fantastical literature do not excite me, but this is one of those should-read books as a Nigerian. Late Amos Tutuola was a pioneer; in that his was one of the first African novels published in the English Language. The Palm-Wine Drinkard was first published in 1952!!
1952!!
1952!!
MY RATING
Not bad
----CAPTAINCUE (...is a freelance writer taking on gigs for unridiculous money. Send me a direct message on Twitter @Captaincue or send me a mail with your writing needs at kaptaincue@gmail.com)
Not bad
----CAPTAINCUE (...is a freelance writer taking on gigs for unridiculous money. Send me a direct message on Twitter @Captaincue or send me a mail with your writing needs at kaptaincue@gmail.com)
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