My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (novel)
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Author | Amos Tutuola |
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Country | Nigeria |
Language | English |
Publisher | Faber and Faber (UK) Grove Press (US) |
Publication date | 1954 |
Pages | 174 |
Preceded by | The Palm-Wine Drinkard |
Followed by | Simbi and the Satyr of the Dark Jungle |
My Life in the Bush of Ghosts is a novel by Nigerian writer Amos Tutuola, published in 1954. It is presented as a collection of related – but not always sequential – narratives.
The stories recount the fate of a small West African boy. After he and his elder brother are abandoned by his family, they flee as armed slave traders approach their village. On becoming separated from his brother, who has likely been captured by the slave traders, he unwittingly enters the bush, or wilderness. He is too young and inexperienced to know, as every hunter and traveler does, that ghosts or spirits live there, and mortals risk great peril by entering the area.
The book is written in English from the viewpoint of the main character, the young boy, and describes his surreal experiences with strange beings in a strange place. Tutuola's command of the language enabled him to modify his writing style to describe the external world and events in an authentic voice of youth and naivety.
The story is not one unbroken narrative, as other stories also appear out of sequence.
Many of the stories have the qualities of children's tales but with nightmarish or gruesome elements, similar to Grimms' Fairy Tales.
My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, like Tutuola's earlier The Palm-Wine Drinkard (1952), is heavily metaphorical and autobiographical.
Critical reception[]
Time magazine selected My Life in the Bush of Ghosts as one of its "100 Best Fantasy Books of All Time".[1]
Tributes[]
The title of the 1981 album My Life in the Bush of Ghosts by David Byrne and Brian Eno was taken from this novel.[2]
References[]
- ^ "The 100 Best Fantasy Books of All Time". Time. 15 October 2020. Retrieved 29 July 2021.
- ^ Byrne, David (2006). "The Making of My Life in the Bush of Ghosts". My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (liner notes). Brian Eno and David Byrne (reissue ed.). Virgin Records. 0946 331341 2 6. Archived from the original on 24 July 2008. Retrieved 26 November 2020.
Scholarly articles[]
- Kalliney, Peter J. (September 2013). "Developing Fictions: Amos Tutuola at Faber and Faber". Commonwealth of Letters: British Literary Culture and the Emergence of Postcolonial Aesthetics. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199977970.003.0005. ISBN 9780199977970.
- Lynn, Thomas Jay (2016). "'Redemption Song': Slavery's Disruption in Amos Tutuola's My Life in the Bush of Ghosts". English Studies in Africa. 59 (2): 54–63. doi:10.1080/00138398.2016.1239418. S2CID 218499241.
- Mbembe, Achille; Mitsch, R. H. (2003). "Life, Sovereignty, and Terror in the Fiction of Amos Tutuola". Research in African Literatures. 34 (4): 1–26. doi:10.2979/RAL.2003.34.4.1. JSTOR 4618325. S2CID 145359045.
External links[]
- My Life in the Bush of Ghosts title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
- 1954 Nigerian novels
- Nigerian English-language novels
- Faber and Faber books
- Nigerian fantasy novels
- 1950s novel stubs