Description
Nigerian writer, Amos Tutuola's first book, The Palm-Wine Drinkard (subtitled ""and His Dead Palm-Wine Tapster in the Dead's Town"") is a novel published in 1952. The first African novel published in English outside of Africa, this quest tale based on Yoruba folktales is written in a modified English or Pidgin English. In it, a man follows his brewer into the land of the dead, encountering many spirits and adventures. The novel has always been controversial, inspiring both admiration and contempt among Western and Nigerian critics, but has emerged as one of the most important texts in the African literary canon, translated into more than a dozen languages. This copy is the 1952 first edition (UK), preceding the first US printing of 1953. Octavo. Original red-orange cloth, spine lettered in dark green. Dust-jacket is in good condition, clipped on the inner flyleaf, some rubbing, two small tears on the upper front corners, and one on the top of the spine. Book is in very good condition; some foxing on endpapers, text block is very clean and bright. Previous owner's signature on front pastedown. From the collection of publisher and poet, Kirby Congdon, who was aligned with leading figures of the San Francisco Renaissance, Black Mountain College and the Beats, Congdon was central to the dissemination of their work, through his small presses; Interim Books, Cycle Press, and Crank Books. Chapbooks, broadsides, and pamphlets along with his legendary underground series Magazine, also elevated the work of many poets. His own poetry was published in almost every small press journal, The New York Times, Christian Science Monitor, and many anthologies. His Magazine, which ran to six issues, published the first iteration of several Bukowski, Micheline and Corso poems. A prodigious and widely published poet, Congdon was at the core of the literary and mimeograph revolutions of the 60s and 70s He corresponded regularly with hundreds of writers in the United States, Europe and South America, forming a vast network of contemporaries. His archive of correspondence, including copies of the letters he sent, provides a deep and unique insight into the concerns, ambitions, frustrations and activities of those who ushered a new zeitgeist and a pivotal cultural transformation in the United States.
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