The Palm-Wine Drinkard (Masterplots, Revised Second Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Amos Tutuola
- First Published: 1952
- Type of Work: Novel
- Type of Plot: Folktale
- Time of Work: Indeterminate
- Setting: Nigeria
- Principal Characters: The Narrator, His Wife, His Palm-wine Tapster, The Curious Creature, The Faithful Mother, Dance, The Red-King, The Invisible Pawn
- Genres: Long fiction, Folklore
- Subjects: Folkloric or magical people, Magic or magicians, Mythology or myths, Marriage, Death or dying, Disasters, Natural disasters, Monsters, Nigeria or Nigerians, Famines
- Locales: Nigeria
The Story:
The narrator lived contentedly as the son of a rich man who retained a palm-wine tapster for his son’s exclusive use. Each day, the tapster drew enormous amounts of palm-wine for the narrator, who drank it, together with his friends. One day, after the narrator’s father had died, the tapster fell from a palm tree and was killed. The narrator missed his supply of palm-wine, and his friends no longer came to see him, so he decided to go to Deads’ Town to find his tapster.
His journey led him from his town to various parts of the bush—that place outside...
[The entire page is 1998 words long]
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