Oyekan Owomoyela, writing in 1999, stated that, while "Amos Tutuola is the first African author to get international fame," he is also "undoubtedly one of the most controversial of African writers; indeed, many would assert that he is indisputably, and by far, the most controversial." Bernth Lindfors has pointed out that Tutuola "appears to be the kind of man least likely to win an international reputation as an author." Lindfors goes on to explain that "considering his cultural background, minimal education, and lack of literary sophistication, it is surprising that he began writing at all and even more astonishing that he chose to write in English rather than in Yoruba, his native tongue."

Tutuola, whose life work includes nine novels and two short-story collections, became known for his epic novels loosely based on traditional Yoruba folktales he learned as a child. The most controversial quality of his writing is the nonstandard use of written English, which Western critics found charming and early African critics regarded as disgraceful.

Tutuola's first novel, The Palm-Wine Drinkard (1952), gained immediate recognition and generally positive reception in England and the United States. Harold R. Collins notes that, as a result of the publication of Tutuola's first novel, "Anglo-Nigerian literature was on the world scene, for it was immediately successful." Lindfors explains that "the first reviewers greeted Tutuola's unusual tale with wide-eyed enthusiasm, hailing the author as a primitive genius endowed with amazing originality and charming naivete." Lindfors states, "Tutuola's second book, My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (1954), was welcomed with the same mixture of awe, laughter and bewilderment that had greeted his first." Collins claims that, with the publication of this second book, Tutuola "was established as a genuine West African literary bombshell." Collins goes on to depict the international breadth of Tutuola's success: "In England he was a big success; his books got enthusiastic reviews from Dylan Thomas and V. S. Pritchett. In America Grove Press brought out his second romance, and he achieved such fame as to be mentioned in Vogue. French, German, Italian, and Yugoslav translations attested to considerable European interest."

However, upon publication of his third novel, Simbi and the Satyr of the Dark Jungle (1955), Western critics began to cool to Tutuola. As Owomoyela pointed out, "Within the space of a few years. . .some of his early admirers were reversing themselves, proclaiming his diminishing literary powers or expressing irritation with the very qualities and affectations they had earlier applauded." Lindfors adds, "By the time Tutuola's fourth and fifth books. . .appeared. . .his European and American readers were tired of his fantasies and fractured English. They expressed impatience with his inability to develop new themes and techniques and deplored his crippling limitations as a writer." Collins sums up this decline in Western reception of Tutuola's work, stating that "it must be admitted that the Western critics' admiration for Tutuola's work was pretty much a flash in the pan. After My Life in the Bush of Ghosts these critics are either silent or patronizingly severe or damningly faint in their praise."

Far from Western critics, the African literati immediately took offense at Tutuola's international recognition. They were both concerned with the image of Africa and Africans that his work promulgated in the West and suspicious of Western motives in praising Tutuola as a primitive and exotic curiosity which was in keeping with a patronizing colonialist view of Africa. Collins noted:

Many educated Nigerians were simply horrified by the books. They deplored his "crudities," his lack of inhibitions, and the folk tale basis of his romances. . .; they...