Amos Tutuola was born in Abeokuta, Nigeria. He received his elementary education at a Salvation Army school and has lived mostly at Ibadan, where he was for a long time a messenger. His highly controversial reputation as a writer is based on his unique style, a type of pidgin English. Tutuola's most popular work so far is his romance, The Palm-Wine Drinkard (1952), an extremely imaginative tall tale drawn from Yoruba legends and myths about a journey into the land of the dead. Despite the controversy surrounding Tutuola's "wrong" use of English, his historical significance as a writer cannot be disputed. Among the first black African writers to be published and win some degree of international recognition, he was also the first writer to see the possibilities of translating African mythology into English in an imaginative way. For all the controversy, Tutuola is highly popular and his books have been translated into many languages.
