Tutuoa didn’t do anything at first with the story, until he bought another magazine and saw an ad from the Lutheran World Press soliciting manuscripts. It was written in English, but a highly distinctive English - an informal, direct English, English as it suited Tutuola to write it. It was a kind of extended fable filled with magic and adventure, mixing myth and folktale in a seemingly endless procession of wonder. It was a wild whirl of tales and motifs, inspired by West African oral storytelling traditions and The Arabian Nights. He completed his first book, The Palm-Wine Drinkard, in only a few days. Tutuola remembered being praised as a storyteller in school and decided there was no reason he shouldn’t turn his hand to writing similar books. As he tells it, a government magazine he happened to read, with “very lovely portraits of the gods,” advertised books based on Yoruba legends. With six years of formal schooling, he served as a coppersmith with the Lagos-based arm of the Royal Air Force in World War Two, then worked at a number of of odd jobs. Amos Tutuola was born in Nigeria in 1920 to a Christian family.
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